Plays from Contemporary Hungary: ’Difficult Women’ and Resistant Dramatic Voices

Szilvi Naray (PhD) is a university lecturer, translator, and theatre director. She lectures in drama and translation studies at the University of Salford, England. She is the founder and artistic director of Ignition Stage, a Manchester based theatre company which specialises in pioneering Eastern European plays in English translation. She publishes in the fields of literary translation with a special interest in feminist translation and has been critically acclaimed for her English world premiere productions of her translations. Her publication "Goulash Socialism vs. Feminism? Beauvoir in Hungary" in Translating Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is published by Routledge, 2023.https://asymptotejournal.com/drama/gyorgy-spiro-prah/https://proquest.com/docview/2171660214https://ignitionstage.wordpress.com/prah/Szilvi Naray (PhD) is a university lecturer, translator, and theatre director. She lectures in drama and translation studies at the University of Salford, England. She is the founder and artistic director of Ignition Stage, a Manchester based theatre company which specialises in pioneering Eastern European plays in English translation. She publishes in the fields of literary translation with a special interest in feminist translation and has been critically acclaimed for her English world premiere productions of her translations. Her publication "Goulash Socialism vs. Feminism? Beauvoir in Hungary" in Translating Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is published by Routledge, 2023.https://asymptotejournal.com/drama/gyorgy-spiro-prah/https://proquest.com/docview/2171660214https://ignitionstage.wordpress.com/prah/

A unique collection of five contemporary plays from 21st-century Hungary, translated into English for the first time. Written by some of Hungary's most highly prolific and commercially successful dramatic voices, these plays are being produced in their native Hungary by theatres that do not adhere to Viktor Orbán's values and offer a counterpoint to the commercial Boulevard Theatre scene of Budapest.Translator and theatre-maker Szilvi Naray champions these unheard voices through her performable and dramatically engaging translations. The plays are aimed at micro-budget productions and offer a special opportunity for students and small theatre companies alike to engage with these witty, politically irreverent plays, finally in English.Each of the selected playwrights has been in direct conflict with the Hungarian government and has been demonised by the state-controlled press. The five plays are thematically threaded together by their common use of strong leading female protagonists with an overarching theme of the family unit. Through the edited introduction the themes and feminine translation strategy discusses how the plays offer a microcosmic lens for understanding the paradox that today's Hungary exemplifies, making this a necessary study into the world of contemporary Hungary through drama.

The plays are aimed at micro-budget productions and offer a special opportunity for students and small theatre companies alike to engage with these witty, politically irreverent plays, finally, in English