Staging Crisis: Political Cabarets in the Early 1930s Vienna and Budapest

The present paper deals with the social context of political cabarets performed in Vienna and Budapest during the interwar period. These cabarets were staged by the Vienna-based Die Sozialistische Veranstaltungsgruppe (Socialist Event Group) (1926–1933) and Barátság (Friendship), the official speaking choir of the Hungarian Metalworkers’ Federation. Both worked in close collaboration with the Social Democratic Party, engaging in political activities like supporting election campaign. Cabarets also provided Barátság the opportunity to bring in unconventional or sensitive subjects. Besides criticizing the oppressive politics of the conservative Horthy regime, including police violence and anti-Semitic laws, comedy sketches also tackled the structural demeanors of Social Democratic party-institutions. The workers’ movement intellectuals who brought these themes onto the agenda of the Hungarian workers’ movement followed international trends and took inspiration mainly from Viennese productions, with the discourse adjusted to fit the local socio-economic conditions. For these reasons, examining the archived cabaret sketches of Barátság alongside the Viennese examples does not only help us to better understand the diverging role of political cabarets amongst the Social Democratic scene, but can also reveal how the Social Democratic parties and their membership tried to mitigate the damage suffered during the years of the Great Depression.