About

In 2009, Kornél Mundruczó, film and theatre director, and Dóra Büki, theatre producer, founded PROTON THEATRE, a virtual artistic company organised around the director’s independent productions. Besides preserving maximum artistic freedom, their goal is to ensure a professional structure for their independently produced theatre plays and projects. Chiefly, their performances are realized as international co-productions, and their frequent collaborators include the Wiener Festwochen; HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin; KunstenFestivalDesArts, Brussels; Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest; HELLERAU, Dresden.

Besides productions directed by the artistic leader – namely, THE ICE (2006); FRANKENSTEIN PROJECT (2007); HARD TO BE A GOD (2010); DISGRACE (2012); DEMENTIA (2013); WINTERREISE (2015); IMITATION OF LIFE (2016); THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA (2018); EVOLUTION (2019) – they wish to provide space for the realisation of the company members’ ideas. In this spirit the following performances were created: LAST, directed by Roland Rába (2014), 1 LINK, directed by Gergely Bánki (2015) and FINDING QUINCY, directed by János Szemenyei (2017).

The performances of the PROTON THEATRE have been touring to more than 120 festivals during these years, from Festival d’Avignon through Adelaide Festival to Singapore International Festival, Seoul Bo:m Festival or the Zürcher Theaterspektakel. 

Born in Hungary in 1975. He studied at the Hungarian University of Film and Drama and is now a renowned European film and theatre director, whose creations premier at the most prestigious festivals all over the world.

He has been working for the stage since 2003. He is most enthusiastic to start a new project whenever he finds an inspiring subject, a team or a venue. During the creative process he tries to build up a team. For new projects he very often casts the same actors, who are working as creative partners to him. It is with them that he devises the productions. After freelancing with more or less the same group of people for several years, in 2009 he founded his independent theatre company, PROTON THEATRE together with theatre producer Dóra Büki.

He was nominated for the Faust Award in 2017 for his outstanding directorial achievement in Proton Theatre’s IMITATION OF LIFE. This was the first time in the history of this award that a non-German theatre, in this case a Hungarian independent company was nominated. His staging of EVOLUTION, a co-production of the Proton Theatre and the Ruhrtriennale was considered the highlight of the 2019 edition of the German festival. The theatre performance has been turned into a film, which premiered in 2021 at the Cannes Film Festival, in the Cannes Premiere section.

Since 2003 he has directed on the opera scene as well. THE MAKROPULOS AFFAIR which premiered in the Flemish Opera in Antwerp was nominated for the International Opera Award in the category Best New Production. Thus, was the first Hungarian nominee.

He made his directorial debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003. That same year, he founded the film production company Proton Cinema Ltd. with Viktória Petrányi, who has been his constant co-writer and artistic collaborator since college. His third feature film, JOHANNA - an operatic adaptation of the story of Joan of Arc - was presented in 2005, in the independent Un Certain Regard section of Cannes Festival, where in 2014 his sixth feature film, WHITE GOD won the main prize of the section. His fourth, fifth and seventh feature-length films took part in the official competition of Cannes: DELTA in 2008, TENDER SON in 2010, JUPITER'S MOON in 2017. His first English-language film, PIECES OF A WOMAN, was in competition at the 77th Venice International Film Festival in 2020 and became a hit on Netflix.

Born in Hungary in 1979. She studied German philology at the Eötvös Lóránd University. Currently, she is the managing director and producer of the PROTON THEATRE.

She worked with the Hungarian independent company Krétakör (Chalk Circle) in several positions from 2003 till 2008. Later, between 2008 and 2009, she was responsible for international relations at Bárka Theatre. In 2009, she founded the independent company Proton Theatre together with film and theatre director Kornél Mundruczó.

Recently, she has been regularly invited to hold lectures in Hungary and abroad (in Hungarian, in English and in German) to talk about her work as a theatre professional and a producer, as well as about financial matters like business start-ups and business development.

For her work towards the international recognition of Hungarian theatre, she received the Sándor Hevesi Award in 2023.