Momentan Tarsulat is Hungary's founding improvisational theatre company, formed in 2003, and the organization credited with establishing improvisation as a recognized theatrical genre in the country. The ensemble performs creativity-based theatrical improvisation games as full-length productions in Hungarian, drawing on a membership community that has known one another since childhood. In 2010 the company opened its own dedicated venue, IMPRO, in the heart of Budapest on O utca.
History
The members of Momentan Tarsulat first encountered one another as children in the late 1980s and early 1990s through Margit Foldessy's creativity development studio. In 2000 they began working together more closely under Balazs Simonyi, who founded the Kex and Tea Literary Circle, which became the organizational precursor to the Tarsulat and ran a contemporary literary reading series alongside improvisation development. The group held its first improvisational evening as Momentan Tarsulat in 2003. Over the following seven years the company built a performance record and audience base before opening its own IMPRO theatre in Budapest in 2010 at O utca 4. As of the mid-2020s the company has logged more than 3,000 performances.
Artistic Identity
Momentan Tarsulat's creative practice is rooted in the intersection of literary imagination, comedic spontaneity, and the collective memory of a long-established ensemble. The company's full-length format treats improvisation as a serious performance discipline, building entire evening-length theatrical experiences from live creative invention rather than structured game formats.
Legacy
Momentan Tarsulat is the originating company of professional theatrical improvisation in Hungary, and its founding, touring, and institutional development through the opening of the IMPRO venue directly enabled the subsequent growth of Budapest's improv ecosystem.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Momentán Társulat. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/companies/momentan-tarsulat
The Improv Archive. "Momentán Társulat." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/companies/momentan-tarsulat.
The Improv Archive. "Momentán Társulat." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/companies/momentan-tarsulat. Accessed March 17, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.