Salford academic brings full-length world premiere of Hungarian drama to MediaCity

Following up on her script-in-hand performance from July 2022, Dr Szilvi Naray will bring a full length adaptation of János Háy’s World War Two drama to audiences across three nights from Thursday 21 May to Saturday 23 May in the Digital Performance Lab from 7.30pm.

The full-length version has been developed by Dr Naray in her role as a Lecturer in Drama and Translation Studies as well as the producer and artistic director of Ignition Stage Theatre Company.

Ignition Stage is dedicated to producing Central and Eastern European drama in translation. Founded and led by Dr Naray, the company has championed Hungarian theatre for English-speaking audiences.

The Dead Man features a cast of five, four current students on the BA Performance and two BA English (Multidiscipline) pathways and a Salford alumna, as Dr Naray embeds employability principles across all her projects at Salford.

It is also co-produced by Salford alumni and will feature original music from Professor Alan Williams, Salford’s Professor of Collaborative Composition and Phil Brissenden, a Senior Lecturer in Music.

The professional production is self-funded through crowdfunding with a partnership with the Hungarian Consulate of Manchester, who will be providing Hungarian wine for audiences.

Set in rural Hungary during World War Two, The Dead Man follows a married woman whose life has been derailed by war. Her husband has been gone for years, presumed dead. She has grieved, adapted and built a new life - and then he returns.

Suddenly, she is expected to become the woman she was before, but she is no longer that person. The war has changed her and now her husband’s return threatens to erase everything she has become.

Dr Naray said: “In a world where war continues to disrupt millions of lives – especially women’s lives – The Dead Man feels painfully, urgently relevant. It is a mirror held up to a world where war still forces impossible choices on those left behind, especially women.

“When I launched my book Plays from Contemporary Hungary in March 2024, a hundred people attended and we sold every book and performed extracts from the anthology, including The Dead Man, and audiences immediately understood its relevance.

“Now it is time to bring The Dead Man back to Manchester as the full production that it deserves and with support from the Hungarian Consulate in Manchester and the University of Salford, we are ready.”

Original playwright János Háy will be in attendance for the performance on Friday 22 May and will take part in an interactive Q&A following the showing.

The production is the latest of a series of special events that Dr Naray has held at the University to promote her English language translations of celebrated Hungarian theatre. She launched her book Plays from Contemporary Hungary: Difficult Women and Resistant Dramatic Voices - which features five celebrated contemporary Hungarian plays into English for the first time - at our MediaCity campus in March 2024.

Krisztina Tóth’s The Bat, one of the plays included in Dr Naray's book, was also performed in the English language for the first time at the New Adelphi Theatre in September 2023 and Dr Naray's translated piece was most recently performed in New York for the first time.

Tickets for the performances can be purchased via Eventbrite.