The act, which has been in preparation for two years, will be submitted to the government in ten days, after agreements are reached on regulations attached to the act, Hiller said.
The ministry has allocated HUF 4 billion for the implementation of the act, Hiller said.
"The amount available until now will in no way be changed; this is not a shifting of funding, but an extra HUF 4 billion that will go to the lives of Hungary's performing artists," Hiller said. The amount will only be available if Parliament approves the legislation, he added.
Hiller said he was unmoved in his belief that the state has a role in culture and the arts, "but it must find the role that is its own: to ensure cooperation, a framework, the conditions and --- though not in its entirety, but a decisive majority - the funding."
The act was originally planned to affect only the theatre, but was later expanded to include other performance arts, including music and dance.
"This draft of legislation is the result of a cooperative effort, in which I always made it a point that it should only be made together with the profession - arguments included - but with a continuous consensus and dialogue," Hiller said.
One of the main points of the act is that it respects artistic freedom to the full extent.
"(The act) has found the right balance between art and politics...it does not make demands, it does not want to say what pieces ought to be performed or who should play the leads," Hiller said.
The other main of the act is to create regulations for things that are not transparent and have often put the area of performance arts into a state of chaos.
The act could be put to a vote at the end of November or the beginning of December.
The act not only serves the theatre profession, but theatre audiences as well, said Hungarian Theatre Association chairman Tibor Csizmadia after being presented with the draft of the act by Hiller.
"The theatre is not a producing sector, here money is necessary. But not for us, for the audiences, who, under the current conditions, cannot pay for tickets and cannot finance the theatre," Csizmadia said.
"There has not been an act that protects the interests of performing artists in Hungary to such a degree in the last ten years," said New Theatre director István Márta.
Hungarian Theatre Association managing director Márta Vajda said the organisation would be sent an electronic version of the draft on Tuesday, after which it would pass on the relevant parts of the act to professional associations and await their responses by the deadline.
The deadline is expected to be ten days from the time the act is sent on Tuesday, said state secretary Márta Schneider.
Photo: Eszter Gordon
