Revival of A’ özvegy Karnyóné (The Widow of Mr Karnyó)

A Survey of József Ruszt’s Interpretation of Csokonai

Abstract

József Ruszt was a significant theatre director, teacher and company organiser in the second half of the 20th century. It is the task of contemporary theatre historiography to study his life’s work and his approach to theatre. In Ruszt’s entire oeuvre, the programmatic staging of Hungarian dramas, including Csokonai’s works, was of outstanding importance. As Ruszt explains: “I love old Hungarian literature. I do not only love its language and its intellectual landscape, but also its undertakings, which are unparalleled in Europe, and I feel that this undertaking is still relevant today, although not for the same reasons as back then.” My research attempts to explore the topicality of Ruszt’s reading of Csokonai through the (re)construction of his production of The Widow of Mr Karnyó, which was performed at the University Stage in 1965. My paper focuses on three aspects: What extent can university (stage) life be a determinant of the freedom movement of theatrical language? What kind of form language did the Universitas Ensemble’s performance use, which circumvented the contemporary realistic-naturalistic canon of form? How did a performance of an 18th century Hungarian drama become one of the most successful and internationally acclaimed performances by the Universitas Ensemble?