11. Madách International Theatre Meeting

Dear viewers!

At the director's request, we are unable to admit spectators arriving late to the Tragédia performance!

Please note that there will be 4 minutes of complete darkness during the performance.

WORLD PREMIERE

Let us start over from Artaud’s cruel visions:

It is idiotic to reprimand the masses for not having a sense for the sublime, when the sublime is confused with one of its formal manifestations, especially since they are always expired manifestations. And if for instance the contemporary crowd does not understand Oedipus Rex anymore, I would dare to say that it is the fault of Oedipus Rex, and not the crowd’s.

How to teach Oedipus to the contemporary crowd in its primeval purpose as a pharmakos? A scapegoat expelled from his own city which had hailed him as a king. How to make Sophocles accessible to everybody? How to process the grieving over the loss of the polis and the sacred? How to free Oedipus from his guilt? Oedipus, the fortunate savior of the polis who solves a children’s riddle. Oedipus, the incestuous and the parricide. Oedipus, who has the supreme courage of wanting to know himself. Oedipus, who rejects gods and seers. Oedipus, who descends to the rotten roots of his family tree, recognizes himself and blinds his own eyes. Not to punish himself but to acquire prophetic sight. Deprived of outer sight Oedipus finally sees his path without losing his human fragility. He wanders in the darkness in search of light. He walks without a guide towards the grove so dear to the Eumenides and in a bright flash he joins the gods, thus attaining, like Krishna, liberation from this material world.