MASZÍN is lying, Transtelex's Emese Vig was right

REQUEST FOR CORRECTION

The leadership of MASZÍN Hungarian Theatre Association turned to the editors of the Transtelex news site with a request for correction regarding an article published on the site.

Since our arguments were presented only partially even in the subsequent partial clarification, we are hereby publishing the original, full text of our request for correction:

Dear Editors,

The undersigned, as leaders of MASZÍN Hungarian Theatre Association, read with bewilderment and dismay Emese Vig's article published on the Transtelex news site on October 1, 2026, titled "The Ministry of Culture hands out a hundred thousand euros in a snap competition, but the money only appears to go to independent players," in which, alongside numerous unfounded and ill-intentioned assumptions and insinuations, we encountered clear factual errors and legally meaningless characterizations regarding our theatre association.

In her piece, the author reviews two Romanian-language articles published on Cultura la Dubă, written by Alexandra Tănăsescu, which — perhaps not by chance — originally make no mention of our theatre association or of its Bucharest festival among the programs she criticizes. It follows, apparently, that our event specifically "bothers" the Transtelex journalist, who for some reason classifies our association among the "fake civil-society actors," and the Bucharest Hungarian theatre festival we founded among those projects which, in her view, are "textbook examples of how funds intended for civil-society/independent projects are channeled to public institutions or state-funded actors behind the screen of an association."

The journalist — since, judging by her article, she did not look into this herself — "naturally" makes no mention of the circumstance she could not have learned of without asking those involved: that our association ultimately did not receive the funding it had requested and had in fact been awarded by the evaluation committee, precisely because of the ministry's rigorous procedures — and consequently, the festival that is in fact already under way these very days was organized and is being carried out without the support of the Ministry of Culture. In fact, we ourselves ended up in the very same position as the "specific civil-society actor" discussed a few lines further down, about whom the author relates with deep empathy that they "ran into an administrative rejection," hastening to explain the reason as well: "Since they could not subsequently amend the plans they had hastily submitted, they were forced into conditions that were difficult to maintain during implementation."

We believe that if the author had taken the trouble to look into — horribile dictu, even by asking those involved — the accuracy of the information she published, she would have learned that this major festival of Hungarian theatre in Romania, BukFeszt, in the end lost, in exactly the same way, the amount of support it had been awarded at the very moment the results were announced. Even if we could not expect the same empathy she showed toward the aforementioned Bucharest association, we might reasonably have hoped for fairer and more impartial characterizations of our own case.

We consider it an even more serious journalistic error than the above that the author confuses two different calls for applications, presenting them as continuations of one another with identical content — something the author of the original articles she cites discusses in two separate pieces, presumably because, unlike our author, she understands the differences between the two calls, which are indicated even in their titles. The program called the Schema de ajutor de minimis pentru proiectele prioritare [de minimis aid scheme for priority projects] is not in fact identical to the program called the Schema de ajutor de minimis pentru sectorul cultural independent privind finanțarea nerambursabilă a proiectelor culturale [de minimis aid scheme for the independent cultural sector regarding the non-reimbursable financing of cultural projects], even though our author tries in every respect to project the criteria of the latter onto the former (something the author of the Romanian articles she used as her source does not attempt to do at all).

While the former program — which our association also applied to — is, true to its name, more of a kind of "emergency fund" for priority programs, requested for programs in a financing crisis that have, in most cases, already been announced, the latter — as its name also indicates — really is aimed at the independent sector. We would like to reassure our author and her readers that our organization did not apply for the latter call, even though, contrary to the author's mistaken information, one of our member theatres currently does operate as a foundation-maintained institution, i.e. not as a public institution maintained by a municipality or the state.

Without going into a further analysis of the article — and without attempting to interpret the author's characterizations such as "fake civil-society" or "specific civil-society" — we would like to clarify, in the interest of accurately informing the public, a few basic factual matters regarding our theatre association:

1. MASZÍN Hungarian Theatre Association was founded in 2017 by four municipally maintained institutions (the theatres of Timișoara, Oradea, Satu Mare and Odorheiu Secuiesc) and one foundation-maintained project theatre (the Arad Chamber Theatre), later joined by further theatres maintained by municipalities and, by now, also by the ministry (in order of joining: Csíki Játékszín, the Udvartér Theatre of Târgu Secuiesc, the Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár), the Tamási Áron Theatre of Sfântu Gheorghe, the Figura Studio Theatre of Gheorgheni, and the Tompa Miklós Company of the Târgu Mureș National Theatre).

2. Our association operates as a registered association; its founders decided to establish it at a directors' round table held at the 2016 IFeszt festival in Satu Mare, following a decade of dialogue in which the need to found a Hungarian professional organization in Romania kept coming up again and again. Our founding was therefore a fully "bottom-up" initiative, which we did not coordinate with any political organization.

3. Our association is funded exclusively by the membership fees paid by its members, non-reimbursable grant funds, private donations, and the revenue from its festivals, operating as an independent legal entity. We are able to put on BukFeszt — now in its fifth edition — exclusively from such sources and through the sacrifices made by our member theatres.

4. From the ministry's emergency fund, our association primarily wanted to cover the member theatres' travel and venue-rental costs — but for the project to succeed, it would have been administratively essential to have another "financing leg," likewise coming from a grant source, which, given the successes of recent years, we had good reason to count on. However, since, contrary to our hopes, we failed to win that other call for applications, the co-financed "own contribution" portion of our application submitted to the ministry fell out of the overall budget, and so — to quote our author — since "the submitted plans could not be amended," our organization and our member theatres too were "forced into conditions that were difficult to maintain during implementation."

As we reported, in response to a journalist's question, to the members of the press interested in our event at our press conference announcing the festival, held at the UNITER headquarters — an event at which we sorely missed the presence of a Transtelex representative — this year's festival edition (and thereby its further fate) became temporarily uncertain precisely because of the circumstances outlined above.

The reason our "specific" and/or "fake civil-society" festival audience can nevertheless applaud Hungarian-language performances in the Romanian capital these very days is thanks to the Department for Interethnic Relations (DRI), to which we would like to express our thanks for stepping in at the last minute as a co-organizer of this year's festival edition — as well as to all our other partners, sponsors, media partners and member theatres who are helping this noble initiative.

Like previous editions, this year's festival could not take place without state funding and civil-society supporters either (whether they qualify as "fake civil-society" or as "specific," in the personal terminology of certain commentators).

In light of the above, we hereby ask the editors of Transtelex to publish this letter of ours in its entirety and without changes on their site, as a correction.

Respectfully, on behalf of MASZÍN Hungarian Theatre Association:

István Bessenyei Gedő, president of MASZÍN,

Northern Theatre of Satu Mare (Szatmárnémeti), Harag György Company

Katalin Czvikker, secretary of MASZÍN,

Szigligeti Theatre, Oradea

Péter Stier, managing director of MASZÍN,

Northern Theatre of Satu Mare

István Albu

Tamási Áron Theatre, Sfântu Gheorghe

Katalin Berekméri

Târgu Mureș National Theatre, Tompa Miklós Company

Gábor Kolozsi Borsos

Figura Studio Theatre, Gheorgheni

László Zsolt Lung

Udvartér Theatre, Târgu Secuiesc

Pál Nagy

Tomcsa Sándor Theatre, Odorheiu Secuiesc

Enikő Orbán

Csiky Gergely State Hungarian Theatre, Timișoara

Gábor Tompa

Hungarian State Theatre of Cluj-Napoca

Albert Veress

Csíki Játékszín, Miercurea Ciuc