Squat's Pig, Child, Fire!

Abstract

The expatriate Hungarian theatre company known as Squat has quite literally attempted to make their life their art. Because the two are seen as identical, art is not an activity that can be given up. They are totally committed. They did give up their theatre when authorities in Budapest prohibited their performances, and after performing in their apartment and other illegal places for four years and giving up their passports, they permanently gave up their country and moved to France, then Holland, and now New York. In the West they took the name Squat because it suggested new settlers—both geographical and spiritual.Originally the group formed in 1969 as Kassák Theatre at the Kassák Culture House in Budapest. In 1972 when the company did its first completely new work, The Skanzen Killers, the group's license to perform was withdrawn on the grounds that it was “obscene” and “apt to be misinterpreted from a political point of view.”