Performing Unbelonging: Exploring the Hungarian Ethnic Identity within and beyond the Nation-State

• In Event: The Liberatory Potentials of Memory Activism in Central-East Europe and the Balkans

Abstract

This paper examines two recent theatrical collaborations between theaters in Hungary and Hungarian ethnic theater companies in Serbia: the 'Red, Red' at the Katona József Theater and the Theatre of Subotica, and the 'Battle of Trianon' at Átrium and the Kosztolányi Dezső Theatre in Subotica. Both performances center on the entangled historical legacies of 'Greater Hungary' and examine the complex ethnic and national identities of Hungarians living within and beyond the borders of the Hungarian nation-state today to contest the nationalist-conservative memory politics that glorifies Hungarian identity as an imagined community of unproblematic ethnic belonging.

Author

• Aniko Szucs, CUNY Queens College