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THE TRAGEDY OF MAN AS THEATRUM THEOLOGICUM (A DRAMATURG’S DIARY)
I was mistaken: the crucifixion remains: the Caravaggio Peter, wooden
ladder, head downward. He himself spreads his arms wide, since there is no
crossbeam: a particularly beautiful, pure image. Joy; at last.
A break. Something happened during the break that I could never have
imagined: Silviu invites us to play volleyball, and Ilir and I jump into the game.
The unselfconscious ball play goes on until the ball hits dangerously close to
the lighting booth. We sneak away from the scene of the crime conspiratorily,
as if we'd never been there. The childlike joy of the preceding scene permeated
the entire break.
The masks arrive. Dragos will adjust them individually to the actors’ heads
early tomorrow morning, on the day of the premiere. And then we should have
another dress rehearsal so we can finally see the performance itself.
I marvel at the human immediacy of this “poor in spirit” fairground acting,
which brings The Tragedy of Man into such human proximity as I have never
experienced before. The viewers laugh at the start, understandably, timidly,
since humor is lacking in the Tragedy’s tradition, but not, as it now becomes
clear, in Madach’s text and the resulting theatrical situations. The Tragedy
productions, even the more significant ones, or at least those that still live in
my memory, associate the text’s greatness and elevation with a sort of theatri¬
cal grandeur and elevation: as if the direction and theatrical imagery typically
sought to compete with Madach’s poetry. In Silviu Purcarete’s conception,
theater is the (self-)definition of human essence, and this is worth approach¬
ing not from the direction of grandeur but from the fallen state and its inti¬
mate ordinariness. Human greatness — which becomes the director’s great
theatrical temptation in the hands of many (thus, the titanic image of the
“great man”) — obscures the true calling according to which making theater
is the praxis of the event of common understanding: theater cannot be good
unless surprise, wonder, and amazement do not enfold us; in other words, we
are always caught in the act when we slink into the proximity of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, or to its fruit tempting us with the promise
of eternal life. “Really, there is no need to make too much of it” — it is with
this liberating sentence that Ortega y Gasset begins his 1946 study The Idea of
Theater, in which he examines the possibilities for theater in Western culture’s
null point following the Second World War.”
A tiring, all-day rehearsal that I observe with concentration; refreshing con¬
versations during the necessary technical breaks. Silviu hands me the drawings
he’s done during The Tragedy of Man: two sketchbooks of different size, one
with a white cover, the other black. Staggering, yet again. As if I were leafing
through the rehearsal process diary, in drawings. Our discussions are mir¬
rored in them with staggering subtlety. I take photos for myself of a portrait
"2 José Ortega y Gasset: La Idea del teatro. Biblioteca Nueva, Madrid, 2008 [1946].
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