The Gyulai Castle Theater is the oldest castle theater in Hungary. It has been operating since 1964 in the courtyard of the only intact, over 600-year-old Gothic brick castle in Eastern Central Europe, on the lake stage with a magnificent panorama, in the renovated chamber theater and in other locations, streets and squares of the city. From the end of June to mid-August, we await our audience with a colorful program almost every day of the season. In keeping with the new traditions of the past decades, we offer a series of all-arts programs for almost two months, providing audiences of all ages and interests with high-quality summer arts experiences and sophisticated entertainment. In addition to the many entertaining, funny, musical productions, our repertoire also includes many performances that entertain and at the same time make us think, at best take us out of our everyday lives, our nerves, our imposed or voluntary schemes, and shake us up, even uplift us, liberate us too. As our slogan proclaims: Gyulai Castle Theater - Where art liberates you. In addition to the spectacular historical drama, various genres of contemporary prose theater, we welcome visitors with high-quality classical music and literature programs with the best performances of opera, musical, folk dance, contemporary dance, puppet theater, jazz, blues, folk music and world music. In recent years, world stars have performed on the stages of our theater alongside the best-known local artists.

The award-winning performances of the All-Art program series, which averages 45-50 productions, are the 4-5 own shows per year. In recent years, returning to our oldest traditions of the 1960s and 1980s, these have included the works of several contemporary Hungarian authors, including several world premieres.

We organize the Shakespeare Festival at the beginning of July as part of the general arts festival. Our aim is to organize a prestigious, international festival in Hungary, where some of the most important domestic and foreign Shakespeare performances can be seen.

A new initiative of the last few years is that during the festival we draw attention to the life's work of one of our national classics with a program series of 5-6 performances on two or three days. After János Székely, Sándor Weöres, Sándor Márai and Magda Szabó, this year Áron Tamási is next.

And in the first week of August, we are organizing a theater festival called Transylvanian Week for the fifth time, where the public can see the best performances of various Transylvanian Hungarian theaters every day.

Our aim is to show the richness, diversity and different values of Hungarian theater culture to the inhabitants of Gyula, vacation guests and lovers of cultural tourism.

In the last two decades, the activity of the Gyula Castle Theater has not been limited to almost two summer months: In its fall-winter-spring season, which lasts from October to April, it represents the above-mentioned endeavors under chamber conditions. In this way, we offer the public of Gyula and its wider catchment area (the south-eastern part of the country) as well as vacationers visiting the city meaningful and uplifting entertainment opportunities in winter and summer.

Program information at gyulaivarszinhaz.hu (Hungarian)