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Squat Theatre Underground, 1972-1976

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2022

Extract

The now-expatriate Hungarian theatre company Squat performed a new work called The Skanzen Killers in January, 1972, in Kassak, a suburb of Budapest. After one performance at the town culture house, the group's license to perform was withdrawn by government authorities on the grounds that the play was “obscene” and “apt to be misinterpreted from a political point of view.” For the next four years Squat went underground.

Between the time of The Skanzen Killers and the group's problem-ridden emigration to France in 1976, the fifth floor apartment of Squat members Peter Halasz and Anna Koos in Kassak became an outlaw theatre. Here more than a dozen complete experimental theatre pieces were developed and presented in private performances for friends, theatre aficionados, artists in various fields, and political sympathizers. The group also performed privately in an unused country chapel and in a sand pit on an uninhabited island.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 The Drama Review

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