12. Madách International Theatre Meeting

To mark the bicentenary of Imre Madách's birth and the 140th anniversary of the theatre premiere of The Tragedy of Man, the magazine Országút invited six leading contemporary artists to illustrate a scene from the play.

Synergy World Theatre Festival was founded in 2017 in Novi Sad, Serbia, with the aim of providing a platform for theatres and companies that work across linguistic and cultural borders. Since its inception, the festival has been organised by the Novi Sad Theatre/Novosadsko Pozorište with the support of the city, under the leadership of Valentin Venczel, manager of the Hungarian-language theatre from 2013 to 2023. The Festival is based in Novi Sad, but in 2023, the year of the Hungarian Theatre Olympics, it came to the National Theatre in Budapest as a participant of the 10th Madách International Theatre Meeting, MITEM.

10 countries • 10 companies • 21 productions

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Imre Madách, at the same timeframe with the Theatre Olympics, the University of Theatre and Film Arts is organising the Madách Project, a series of events in the framework of which 'The Tragedy of Man' directed by Attila Vidnyánszky will be staged again with the participation of foreign and Hungarian theatre students. 

According to the National Theatre of Hungary, the Chorus Repertory Theatre of India will not be able to hold its guest performances rescheduled from the original date to 6-7 June, and has therefore been cancelled from the MITEM programme. The floods in the Manipur region did not spare the Chorus Repertory Theatre’s headquarters, and the company was unable to make arrangements for its European tour in time. Tickets can be redeemed in person at the box office of the National Theatre of Hungary until 16 June. Online tickets buyers will be refunded within a few days.

European Theatre Prize and International Ibsen Prize-winning German composer and director, Heiner Goebbels will hold a workshop entitled The Aesthetics of Absence at the Uránia National Film Theatre on 26 May as part of the 10th Theatre Olympics.

The English language issue of the professional journal of the National Theatre in Budapest has been composed for the guests of the Theatre Olympics and MITEM 2023. The World Theatre and Theory block draws attention to Hungarian-language theatrical publications released for the event, the authors of which will also be present as creators in the programme. In the Madách 200 block, the writings are intended for the participants of the international Az ember tragédiája – The Tragedy of Man project. Our other compilation offers an insight into the directorial work of Attila Vidnyánszky.

According to the “astro-mythological” interpretation by Gábor Pap, Az ember tragédiája (The Tragedy of Man) by Madách reaches its nadir in the axial Paris scene (Scene 9), the apocalyptic judgement situation of the Libra decan of Aquarius, which, however, does not appear on the everyday level but as a vision, as a dream within a dream.

If I manage to stay on my own in the “lion’s cave” of the castle in Sztregova, I always attempt the impossible: I am trying to imagine, to fathom, to experience how, for thirteen months, Imre Madách was receiving the impulses to write his work.

As can be seen from the bibliography of translations compiled by Mihály Praznovszky and published in the volume titled Madách Színről színre (Madách Scene by Scene), there are basically three variations to encounter on the title of Madách’s The Tragedy of Man: one is “the tragedy of mankind” (in English, Polish, Russian, Romanian and Danish) or “the tragedy of the human” (in Norwegian, Italia and Russian) or the “human tragedy” (in Finnish); then the “sad human song” (in Armenian), “the destiny of man” (in Japanese); and the “vision of Adam” (in Hebrew)