Máté Szabó attended drama classes as a high school student in Debrecen, and then studied in the drama department of the College of Theatre and Film Arts from 1995 to 1997, and later on (1999-2004) also in the theatre-directing course headed by Miklós Szinetár there, with a specialisation in musical drama. After obtaining his degree, he worked as a director first in Eger (2004-2005), and then in Szolnok (2005-2007). Between 2012 and 2015 he was a member of the artistic board of the National Theatre of Miskolc, and in 2015 was named acting director of the theatre, and later on artistic director. He has taught several acting classes at the opera department of the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy. The recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, including the Örkény Scholarship (2005), he won the special prize of the Rural Theatres Festival in 2013 for Me and My Little Brother and the award for the best production at the Primavera Festival organised at the Erkel Theatre, for Don Giovanni. 2016 saw him winning both the Kálmán Nádasdy Award and the Déryné Award. His drama Rooming House Play was published in the periodical Színház (“Theatre”) in 2005. Since 2000, he has presented nearly 60 prose and musical theatre (operetta and opera) works, having worked at the University of Theatre and Film Arts, as well as at the theatres of Eger, Szolnok, Pécs, Veszprém, Szeged, Debrecen, Kaposvár and Szombathely. In the neighbouring countries, he has also worked at theatres in Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureș), Temesvár (Timișoara), Komárom (Komárno) and Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca), while further afield, he also directed the piece Yvonne, Prinzessin von Burgund in the Polish city of Radom in 2010. In Budapest, he has had premieres at the New, Radnóti, Bárka, Pest and Szkéné theatres, as well as at the Budapest Operetta Theatre. He made his debut at the Erkel Theatre in 2015 with Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor, and at the Opera House with Busoni's Doktor Faust in 2015, and also staged Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2016 as a joint production between the Opera and the Liszt Music Academy.
