We continue our series of reports on the Madách Project. The following is the testimony of Bianca Temneanu, who is doing her Masters in stage directing at the I. L. Caragiale University of Theatre and Film Arts, who, together with two colleagues, staged three scenes of The Tragedy of Man and participated in the artistic process in Hungary.
Hajógyári Island, Budapest.
The vast ruins of the former shipyard enclose a theatrical multiverse in an industrial hall, which is meant to present Adam’s terrible journey through time and space, together with his tireless guide Lucifer.
Attila Vidnyánszky, who is known for directing several productions of The Tragedy of Man, is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of the author, Imre Madách, with a marathon performance in an unusual space where more than 150 actors brought to life a scene from the work.
We, three first-year students of the Master’s programme in directing, together with nine first-year and two final-year acting students, also from the Master’s programme, contributed our own creative world to this performance: we staged three of the 15 scenes of the original dramatic work.
Beyond the interesting experience of co-directing, working with a difficult, mysterious, old text, and the (natural) tensions that were part of the process of making the three scenes “our own”, I think the most important aspect of this project was the opportunity to participate in the creation of the whole, harmonizing the many aesthetic and phonetic differences, whether they be related to physicality or acting keys, adaptation or rewriting, sound and lighting, choreography and spatiality, scenography, music, tempo, rhythm, colours, and so on, and so on, and so on. ..
In a few days, a huge working mechanism was built, with a new heart in which we all pulsated together. I realized that theatre could still exist that we could look up with hope. That we could shout in unison, together with the actors at the end of the performance: fear not!
