Armidale playwright to perform in Budapest

November 19, 2007

Barbara Albury, an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of New England, will be performing one of her own plays in Hungary this week at an international women's conference.

The World Conference of Hungarian Women, sponsored by the Association for Women's Career Development in Hungary, will take place on the 23rd and 24th of November in the historic Parliament House building in Budapest. About 400 delegates – more than 100 of them from outside Hungary – are expected to attend.

Ms Albury, who is of Hungarian origin, will be the only delegate from the Southern Hemisphere at the conference in Budapest; all the others travelling to Hungary will be from Europe, North America and Israel. "I was invited to attend after I served as compère for the 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, held at Parliament House, Sydney, in October 2006," she said. "I'm delighted to be able to participate in an event of this kind, which has as its objectives the strengthening of democracy in Hungary and the promotion of equal opportunities for Hungarian women."

Barbara Albury (pictured here) is well-known in the Armidale area as an accomplished theatre director and actor. She is also a successful playwright, whose works have been staged professionally in Sydney and broadcast on ABC Radio National.

Her play Hungarian Sunday was first produced in 1998 as part of the Olympic Arts Festival in Sydney. Dealing with the experiences of Hungarian migrants coming to Australia, it was praised by the Sydney University academic Dr Zita Weber, in her study of post-war migration, for the skilful way in which it "encapsulates concepts of change, loss and grief".

For the Budapest performance, Ms Albury has adapted a 20-minute section of her play for presentation as a two-person dramatic reading with multimedia. Assisting her in the performance will be Laszlo Tahi Toth, one of Hungary's leading film and TV actors. The evocative viola score for the production is played by another UNE affiliate: Chris Cunningham, an Honorary Fellow in the School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences. Sound recording and multimedia preparation were done by Andrew Nash, the Audio Engineering teacher at Armidale TAFE.

In addition to her dramatic presentation at the conference, Ms Albury will participate in a panel session on the perennial problem of balancing family and professional responsibilities. "Being the mother of a disabled child has added an extra dimension to the 'family' side of the equation for me," she said, "but I have always tried to continue my professional theatre work, even if it's at a reduced level."

Her contribution to the panel discussion will focus on how she and other women in similar circumstances have managed their career aspirations. "It's a difficult problem," she said, "and no two people's situations are exactly the same. But it's important to get the issue of women with disabled children on the agenda in any discussion of women's careers."

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 19, 2007 04:51 PM