Madách Imre

The Tragedy of Man

GG Tánc - Gárdonyi Géza Theatre, Eger (Hungary)

GG Tánc Eger is putting to the stage one of the best-known and most influential dramas of Hungarian literature: The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madách.

“It is a treasure of Hungarian culture about which most people have stronger opinions than knowledge. A story with dizzying and frightening depths and dense, at times dry sentences, situations that are more philosophic than dramatic, and puts its reader to the test with an all-consuming passion that prepossesses all its verses. And so this is the second challenge: how do you translate this very difficult work into the language of dance – knowing that its message lies mainly in its sentences, associations, and composition instead of its plot? There is no perfect stage adaptation of the Tragedy. This only goes to show its greatness and perpetuality.

Just like all of us, I have also seen a lot of different versions of the play. But the stage adaptations I have seen rarely touched me as deeply as the original, written form of the play.

We have attempted to represent Madách's masterpiece in a complex stage show where the mostly visual form created by dance is, at the most important dramatic moments, completed by the magic of words – thanks to the involvement of the actors of Gárdonyi Géza Theatre."

Tamás Topolánszky, choreographer