Usually, the functioning of academic communities follows a mostly imperceptible tradition, in the form of the succession of students and the accumulation of readings, which creates the cultural capital (in Bourdieu’s sense) that makes the profession somewhat visible in the processes of professionalisation. The institutional emergence of theatre studies as a profession in Hungary has been somewhat different: it can be traced back to a series of beginnings, one of which is the creation of the Research Department of the Association of Theatre and Film Arts. The present study, focusing on archival sources from 1949–1954, examines the organisational framework, financial possibilities, and political directives of this institution, caught between the dual responsibilities of nationalisation and reconstruction; and searches for texts that could lead towards the establishment of the first theatre studies research group at Pécs University, the first department in Veszprém, and eventually the first Philther workshop.