The Hungarian Theatre of Cluj welcomes its audience with seven new premieres, prestigious domestic and international guest performances, and the 10th anniversary edition of the Interferences International Theatre Festival. In the 2026/2027, 234th season, the company is preparing to present four Main Hall and three Studio productions. In the Main Hall, works by Gogol, Caragiale, Eduardo De Filippo, and Shakespeare will be brought to the stage, while in the Studio, audiences can enjoy plays by András Visky, Béla Pintér, and Arthur Adamov.

At the theater’s season preview press conference, Gábor Tompa introduced the company’s new members — actors Hunor Fazakas, Norbert Kovács, and Noémi Szőcs — and then outlined the plans for the upcoming season.

The season’s first premiere will be N. V. Gogol’s Dead Souls, directed by István K. Szabó, on October 17. Chichikov’s story reveals a thoroughly corrupt, grotesque world: the protagonist attempts to secure a government loan by purchasing serfs who are listed as alive on census forms but are, in fact, already dead. At first glance, Gogol’s “Hell” appears almost childlike in its simplicity, but behind the world of the living dead, a far darker social reality emerges.

In early 2027, the Studio will host the premiere of András Visky’s drama Teréz, directed by Gábor Tompa. Drawing on the legacy of Mother Teresa, the play is a meditation on doubts about faith and redemption.

Also in the first months of 2027, I. L. Caragiale’s A Lost Letter will be staged, directed by Gábor Tompa, with the subtitle The Comedy of the Unexpected Elections. Twenty years after the Cluj-Napoca premiere of A Lost Letter, the director returns to Caragiale’s classic as a further exploration of the earlier stage version. The production reinterprets the play through the lens of today’s political reality, setting the story in the immaculately white restroom of a modern parliament — a space where apparent purification coexists with political deals taking place behind the scenes.

On March 21, the company will present Eduardo De Filippo’s play Grand Magic, directed by Luca De Fusco, artistic director of the Teatro di Roma. First written in 1948, the play takes the audience to the borderland between reality and imagination: following the performance of a third-rate magician and the disappearance of a young woman, the ironic story gradually evolves into a portrait of a man who is increasingly unable to distinguish between reality and illusion.

A Studio premiere will also take place at the end of March. Mózes Horváth is directing Béla Pintér’s play Muck, which explores social prejudices and stereotypes — as well as the fundamental desire for acceptance and human connection — through the lens of a small Hungarian village community and a story of adoption.

In May, Silviu Purcărete returns to the Cluj company to stage Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. This marks Silviu Purcărete’s sixth production at the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj and his second Shakespeare play in Cluj, following Julius Caesar, which premiered in 2017.

The season concludes in June with a Studio premiere. Alain Timár directs Arthur Adamov’s All Against All. Set in a totalitarian country ravaged by economic crisis, the story examines the mechanisms of political oppression, scapegoating, and the shifting balance of power.

One of the season’s most important events is the 10th Interferences International Theatre Festival, which will take place from November 10–22, 2026. At this anniversary event, 25 productions from 14 countries will be presented in Cluj. The program both looks back on past editions of “Interferences” and opens up new creative worlds: artists closely tied to the festival’s history — such as Silviu Purcărete, Josef Nadj, András Urbán, Jaram Lee, and Frank Hoffmann — are returning, while the companies of Akram Khan and Emma Dante, among others, are coming to Cluj-Napoca for the first time.

The tenth edition is thus not merely an anniversary event, but also a reaffirmation of the core concept of Interferences: a meeting point for diverse theatrical cultures, languages, and artistic visions, which, for nearly two weeks, will once again make Cluj-Napoca one of the key venues on the international theater scene.

Ticket sales for the 10th anniversary edition of Interferences will begin on September 15. The festival program will be expanded with additional accompanying events in the coming weeks, and more detailed information about the invited performances, artists, and companies will be made available on an ongoing basis via the theater’s and the festival’s online platforms.

During its 234th season, the company of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj will perform at several prestigious domestic and international venues. The company kicked off the season in August with a guest performance: Attila Vidnyánszky Jr.’s production of Janovics was presented at the 25th Partium Hungarian Days.

I Am the Wind, directed by Gábor Tompa and based on a work by Jon Fosse, will be presented on October 6 in Bucharest as part of the BukFeszt program, and in November, the company will perform in Rome at the invitation of the Teatro di Roma. The production will then make its debut at the Luxembourg National Theater in early December.

Gábor Tompa’s production of Eugène Ionesco’s Exit the King will be presented in September in Varna at the 2nd Black Sea International Theater Festival, and then on October 21 in Bucharest as part of the National Theatre Festival (FNT).

The musical Abigél, based on the novel by Magda Szabó and directed by Enikő Eszenyi, will be performed as a guest production at the Csokonai National Theater in Debrecen from September 30 to October 1.

In addition to the performances, the theater continues to prioritize direct engagement with the audience this season: post-performance meet-and-greets, literary discussion events, and theater education programs will continue, as will the Livingroom series.