Based on short story by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
Diary of a Madman
Moving Music Theatre Bitola and Center of Culture Bitola (MK)
Schedule
Running time 1 hour. No interval.
Performance is in English and Spanish language with Slovene surtitles.
Première: 10 June 2015, Bitola, Macedonia
Composer, set designer and director Marjan Nećak
VIdeo designer Marin Lukanović
Performer Ozren Grabarić
Diary of a Madman by N. V. Gogol is considered to be one of the earliest detailed record of schizophrenia, long before the disease got its recognition and name in the medical practice. However, Gogol’s short story doesn’t analyse the disease in the medical sense, but rather questions the world in which the individual struggles to make sense of his identity and social status. Gogol, in a lucid mannerthrough the disease of Poprishchin, speaks about the disease of the society and
reminds us that all of us are in some kind of conflict with the reality. Which reality is more real? The one we read about in the newspapers, the one we observe in our immediate vicinity, or the one inside of us?
While conflicts between East and West, left and right, religious and atheistic world outlooks become more and more intense, every person fights for his own normality and in this fight he is declared crazy. This chamber spectacle in duration of one hour, through music, video and theatre performance explores a distorted view of a low-ranking civil servant who is marginalized by the society and casted off as unwanted.
