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Szerző/Author: Kornélia Deres (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-5339-8855
E-mail: deres.kornelia@btk.elte.hu
Rövid életrajz/Bio: Kornélia Deres is a Junior Assistant Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She was a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Cologne, and a Junior Research Fellow at the IAS of Central European University. Her articles were published by Theatre Research International, New Theatre Quarterly, Theatralia, and Global Performance Studies. She is the author of two monographs and co-editor of five volumes. Her current research interests are nineteenth-century interconnections of theatre and science, performativity and archives, and Cold War theatre and art histories.
How to cite:
Theatron, Vol. 16. No. 4. (2022): 28–42.
Cím/Title (ENG): Community and Invisible Work at the Szkéné Collective: Methodological Questions on Researching Amateur Theatres during the 1960s and 1970s
DOI: 10.55502/the.2022.4.28
Abstract:

The essay aims at highlighting the methodological challenges of researching amateur theatres under Hungarian state socialism, including the accessibility of documents in official archives, leading and sometimes misleading narratives of historiography, and the emerging role of oral history interviews and personal collections. Focusing on the history of the university theatre at Budapest University of Technology, namely, the Szkéné Collective, the case study investigates the dynamics of invisible work, collective creation, and the role of female participants between 1962 and 1973. In order to acknowledge the role of community in amateur theatre practices, it is essential to readdress the hierarchical understanding of a collective, and search for the usually hidden stories of shared creativity and labour.

Keywords: theatre history, state socialism, amateur theatre, Szkéné, collective creation