The man behind the curtain
"Less than a month after the bill passed, the list of the board members was announced: it had two oil company managers, one film producer, one theatre actor/director with no teaching experience and as chairman the one man who has decided about every major issue in the theatre for the past ten years: Attila Vidnyánszky. The man is the director of the Hungarian National Theatre, artistic director of his home theatre in the Hungarian diaspora of the Ukraine, head of two professional organisations, director of a major international festival and deputy dean of the only other actor-training higher education state institution, where he took over in 2011 with no academic qualifications. As both students and faculty report in some detail, he loosened the strict first three-four year actor training to such an extent that after the first year or two, there are almost no classes, students are sent away to train at different theatres all over the country. He also fired most of the highly qualified, successful and well-liked faculty to bring in partially highly questionable characters in their place including a priest."
"The list of the board members — five men without a single name from among the university's proposed list or anyone who knows the institution — was the last straw for many. Gábor Zsámbéki, former founding director of the Katona József Theatre and one of Hungary's most defining stage directors of the past five decades, who trained generations of actors for 41 years, resigned right away, along with Máté Gáspár, former manager of Árpád Schilling’s world-famous independent theatre, Krétakör and head of the Institute of Art Theory and Mediation. They were soon followed by Gábor Székely, one of the other great legends of contemporary Hungarian theatre and mentor for most stage directors under fifty including Viktor Bodó and Árpád Schilling."
"By then, an unprecedented series of vicious attacks was launched against the university in general, and some of its leading figures personally. In numerous cases, the attacks rose to the level of slander and libel and they were always packed with false claims, innuendo and unproven facts, each of which were refuted by the newsletters and statements of the university over the summer in great detail and in a civilised tone much unlike that of the attackers, including several board members."
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