The Katona József Theatre is the best known Hungarian theatre company - a public theatre, supported mainly by the City of Budapest. As an independent company, it was founded in 1982, seceding from the National Theatre of Budapest, led by general director Gábor Székely and art director Gábor Zsámbéki. Since 1989 the post of general director has been held by Gábor Zsámbéki with Gábor Máté as general stage director, Tamás Ascher, Péter Gothár and Viktor Bodó at his side as stage directors. Several actors and directors of the company teach actor students at the Academy of Theatre and Film.
The Katona József Theatre has extensive international connections. The company regularly embarks on international tours and to date had over 150 performances abroad in cities of the world from Paris to Chicago, from London to Caracas, from Milan to Sydney. The productions and artists of the Katona have received numerous important national and international awards. Just to mention those of the performances of the current repertory, Ascher’s Ivanov won the Golden Laurel Wreaths for the Best Performances and Best Director in Sarajevo, 2004, the Golden Mask for Best Foreign Production in Moscow, 2008, Bodó’s Rattledanddisappeared won the Golden Laurel Wreaths for the Best Performances and Best Director in Sarajevo, 2005, won several prizes at Kontakt Festival, Torun, 2006 and several prizes at Small Scenes Festival, Rijeka, 2007 including Best Performance. Besides these productions the following performances of our current repertoire have been invited to theatres and festivals all over the world: The Last Night of Carnival, The Trachinae, Wild Duck, Presidents. Many of our performances won several awards at the POSZT Hungarian Theatre Festival in the past few seasons.
M. Gorky. BARBARIANS (directed by Tamas Ascher) - September 16, 17, 2009
A.Chekhov. IVANOV (directed by Tamas Ascher0 - September 18, 19, 2009