BUDAPEST — The applause was still going strong after an evening performance at Jozsef Katona Theater in Budapest this week when one of the actors, his shirt and face covered in stage blood, turned to the audience with a request. He asked the theatergoers to gather and pose for a photograph with the cast, hands held up in protest.
The demonstration was an act of defiance against moves by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to tighten its control over the performing arts by changing the way theaters receive state funding, a significant source of income.
Although the measures, enacted by Parliament on Wednesday, did not hand as much direct control to the government as documents leaked to the news media last week had suggested, the move sent a chill through the Hungarian arts scene. Shows of discontent similar to that at the Katona Theater took place in other playhouses around Budapest, the capital.
“When we defend the freedom of theaters today, we defend the city’s freedom,” Budapest’s mayor, Gergely Karacsony, an environmentalist who is backed by an opposition alliance, said on Monday at a rally against the law.
The change comes as Mr. Orban’s government has become increasingly authoritarian and eroded democratic institutions. It has widened its control over the news media and education, and has given allies roles in overseeing the country’s cultural institutions. And after winning a third term last year, Mr. Orban set the tone for a battle over the arts, saying, “We must embed the political system in a cultural era.”
Budapest will be particularly affected by the new funding rules, because it hosts most of Hungary’s high-profile theaters — including the Katona, where the handling of a sexual misconduct scandal has complicated its relationship with Mr. Orban’s government.
Hungary’s government spending on culture is among the highest in Europe as a share of economic output — the Katona received about $2.4 million from the state this year, more than the money it took in from the city of Budapest, private donors and ticket sales combined.
Many see the new measures as the product of a power struggle between the government and local authorities that has broken out since Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party was defeated in a mayoral race in the capital and in several other cities in October.
The changes shift the responsibility of funding city-operated theaters onto city authorities, with financial support from the central government available only if certain conditions are met, including approval over the naming of directors.
That has prompted fears among many in the Hungarian arts scene — which has a strong theatrical tradition and has been a pillar of free speech even under Communism — that artistic freedom is at risk.
The government department in charge of culture dismissed the fears about a threat to artistic integrity as “opposition agitation” based on “fake news,” saying in a statement that the changes would ensure that “public money is used transparently, with clear responsibilities attached to it.”
Yet lawmakers allowed no public consultation on the legal changes, which were presented just days before the parliamentary vote.
The Hungarian Theatrical Society — a representative body led by Attila Vidnyanszky, the head of the National Theater who supports Mr. Orban’s government — welcomed the measures, though it said in a statement that future agreements should not allow “state interference in the artistic work of theaters.”
Like other theaters, the Jozsef Katona has regularly staged works that reflect on societal issues, including in the waning years of Communism.
Some of its plays have been seen as critical of populism, including a recent staging of “On the Royal Road: The Burgher King,” a play about President Trump written by the Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek. A 2017 staging of Alexander Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov,” about a powerful regent and czar of Russia, was taken by some to be a representation of Mr. Orban.
The production after which the protest photo was taken this week, Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” is a parable of justice involving two women’s struggle for the custody of a child. Its director, Kriszta Szekely, said the venue was “a type of critical theater that reacts to the present.”
She dismissed the notion, often repeated in government-friendly news outlets, that works there were politically motivated. “My shows are about what goes on with people, with their emotions and their lives,” Ms. Szekely said.
But a recent sexual misconduct scandal at the Katona has complicated the theater’s dealings with the government. Last month, the theater fired Peter Gothar, a prominent director and longtime collaborator, after accusations surfaced that he had sexually abused two co-workers.
The initial, vague statement from the theater did not name either the accused or the two alleged victims. A day later, Mr. Gothar admitted one instance of misconduct against a woman — a sequence of events that unleashed a storm of questions and criticism, especially from government-friendly news outlets, even though the theater’s artistic director later said that their intention had been to protect the privacy of those involved.
The theater’s handling of the case has led some to express concern that it has provided ammunition for the government to justify greater oversight of theaters.
One prominent lawmaker from Mr. Orban’s party, Mate Kocsis, wrote on Facebook that the “Gothar-style harassing theaters demand money from the government while blocking insight into their affairs and, at times, conceal criminal acts for years.”
But Andrea Tompa, a writer and theater critic, said that such sentiment did a disservice to the problem of sexual misconduct, which should not be used as a political tool.
“Society here is not prepared to discuss a case like this in its own political and social dimension,” she said. “Instead, it becomes a tool for something else.”
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