On Friday night, Romanian and Hungarian artists protested in Nagyvárad and Szatmárnémeti with a street performance and a lightning strike against the Bihar County Council's plan, which would merge the Romanian and Hungarian theaters, puppet theaters, dance groups, and the philharmonic in Nagyvárad into one large joint institution, and the organizer would terminate the artists' indefinite temporary employment contract.
In order to support the cultural institutions of Nagyvárad, several petitions were created, and many leading Romanian theater professionals also expressed their concerns about the county government's plan. On Friday evening, hundreds of people gathered at Szent László Square in Nagyvárad, where the artists of the cultural institutions affected by the merger protested. After a short presentation, the protest was read out in Romanian and Hungarian, in which they ask for the independence of the institutions and the retention of employment contracts for an indefinite period.
In Szatmárnémeti, the company of the Hungarian-speaking György Harag and the Romanian-speaking Andrei Raicu of the Northern Theater held a flash dance, expressing their protest against the plans of the Bihar county government. The decision "endangers the independent existence of the Hungarian theater in Nagyvárad, which has a 120-year tradition," they said.
The artists of the Hungarian theater in Temesvár and Cluj-Napoca also expressed their solidarity with their Nagyvárad colleagues on their social media pages.
At the beginning of May, the plan of the president of the Bihar county municipality, Ilie Bolojan, to organize the Szigliget Theatre, the Romanian Regina Maria Theater and the Nagyvárad State Philharmonic into a single joint institution was made public. Both theaters have a puppet company and a folk dance group, so they would essentially bring together seven companies. As a result of the reorganization, the institutions' repertoire character would cease and they would become project institutions. We also reported on them here.
The leadership of the Bihar County Self-Government has for the time being officially denied that such a draft decision is on their agenda. The plan was made public when Ilie Bolojan presented his ideas to Romanian theater artists at a meeting. The county government, led by the former mayor of Nagyvárad, has implemented several significant cost-cutting measures since last year's elections, for example merging the cultural periodicals Várad and Familia into the Bihar county library.
Source: MTI
