HISTORY AND FOUNDATION
Játéktér (Playing Area) was born in 2012 out of necessity — and ambition. For decades, Transylvanian Hungarian theatre had no dedicated periodical of its own: no place where performances could be documented, debated, and contextualised within a broader European conversation. Theatre scholars Dr Rita Sebestyén and Dr József Kötő set out to change that. What they founded in Cluj-Napoca was not merely a journal, but an institutional act — the deliberate construction of a critical infrastructure that a vibrant theatrical culture had long deserved.
The founding editorial team brought together some of the most committed voices in Transylvanian Hungarian cultural life: Rita Sebestyén and Ildikó Ungvári Zrínyi as editors-in-chief, alongside József Kötő and Zsolt Karácsonyi as founding editors. The editorial board was shaped from the outset by Mária Albert, Péter Demény, Réka Dunkler, Andrea Zsigmond, and Zsuzsa N. Szilágyi — a constellation of scholars, critics, and practitioners united by a shared conviction that this theatre world deserved its own critical language.
From the very first issue, presented simultaneously in Oradea and Budapest, Játéktér signalled its intentions clearly: this would be a platform without borders, with editorial roots stretching across Transylvania’s two Hungarian university centres, Cluj-Napoca and Târgu Mureș. Over the years, Anikó Varga, Ágnes Karolina Bakk, Beáta Lídia László, and Leonidasz Purosz also joined the work, each contributing to the journal’s growing reach and depth. Réka Dunkler has anchored its operational continuity from day one. Between 2014 and 2022, Editor-in-Chief Anikó Varga expanded the journal’s presence far beyond the region, weaving an international network of contributors and collaborators. Since 2022, the editorial team has worked on a non-hierarchical, community basis — true to the spirit of the project from the start.
But Játéktér has never been content to remain on the page. Over the years it has been the engine behind international symposia, mentoring programmes, and workshops that pushed at the definition of theatre itself — exploring contemporary dance, performance, political art, and the theatrical language of migration. The Representations of the Other project (2013), the Otherness Dialogues series (2015), and two experimental summer camps (2018–2019) stand as landmarks of this broader mission. Between 2013 and 2018, the Playing Area Prize recognised the most promising young theatre-makers emerging from Transylvania.
More than a decade on, Játéktér remains what it was conceived to be: the meeting point of Romanian and Hungarian theatrical culture, and the critical memory of a theatre world that refuses to be forgotten.
