The Stone Theatre

The story of the easternmost stone theatre in Transylvania began in 1948 when the Workers' Theatre of Cluj-Napoca was moved to Sfântu Gheorghe. It found its first premises in a converted distillery, later a bottling plant for carbonated water, in the courtyard of the Kupferstich House at Kossuth Street no. 3, which has since been demolished, but practically from the opening night of 23 August 1948 - when Ferenc Szemlér's rather partisan one-act play A Bridge Will Be Built was performed - it became clear that the People's Hungarian State Theatre could not fit in that room with its tiny stage and 200 uncomfortable wooden chairs.

The theatre, which today bears the name of Áron Tamási, moved to a worthy home on 30 December 1958. The cinema hall, then in a very neglected state, was rebuilt and modernised, and, in the grey of the 1950s the interior looked sumptuous, with large areas of walls covered in reddish-beige travertine marble from Italy. Special attention was also paid to the interior decoration, the reliefs and frescoes praise the work of artists András Bordy, István Barabás, Márton Izsák, István Csorvássy, and Gábor Piskolti. After decades of performances of fluctuating artistic quality in constrained circumstances, the theatre, which since the 1990s has been among the best in the country and this year celebrates its 75th anniversary, is inviting audiences to its performances.

Samu Csinta