Jakab Tarnóczi (HUN)

was born in Hungary in 1994. After high school, he was admitted to the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest, where he studied directing with a focus on music-theatre for five years. During his university years, he worked with several theatres, including the Szigligeti Theatre in Oradea, Thalia Theatre in Budapest, the Hungarian State Opera, and Katona József Theatre in Budapest. After graduating in 2019, he freelanced for a year before joining Katona József Theatre in 2020, where he has been a permanent director and a member of the Artistic Council since 2021.

Initially directing classics, Tarnóczi has focused in recent years on original stage projects, often as a writer or co-writer. That’s how he created his notable works at Katona Theatre including God, Homeland, Family (2021), Lonely Lives(2022), Ecstasy (2023), and Radical Relax (2024). His experimental production Melancholy Rooms was invited to the Lessingtage Festival in Hamburg in 2023, leading to international collaborations in the German language area. Within a year he developed the production, Das Gastmahl (2024) in Theater Aachen, directed the Austrian premier of Githa Sowerby’s Rutherford and Son (2025) in Schauspielhaus Graz, and directed the first premiere of Asiimwe Deborah Kawe’s The Promised Land (2025) in Residenztheater München. His multimedia installation winterreise.box, based on his Winterreise production at Örkény Theatre, Budapest represented Hungary at the 2023 Prague Quadrennial and won an award.

The Hungarian Theatre Critics’ Association named him the “Most Promising Young Artist” in 2019, and since then, several of his productions and collaborators have been nominated for or received awards from the Association In 2023, he received the Junior Prima Award. Since 2021, he has also been teaching at the FreeSzfe Association.

He is currently working on an adaptation of Marlen Haushofer’s Wir töten Stella for Schauspielhaus Graz, and is also writing his newest play, Requiem, for the Katona József Theatre in Budapest.