The Tragedy of Man is a play written by the Hungarian author Imre Madách and considered to be one of the major works of Hungarian literature, and one of the most staged Hungarian plays today. It has been directed by many over the time such as Sardar Tagirovsky, a young and talented Tatar theatre director, who put the play on stage with his independent theatre company called Laboratorium Animae at Ferenczy Museum in Szentendre, 2019. This special direction needed a visual identity that represents its uniqueness including the posters, the booklet and the social media communication.
The aim was to design a visual identity for The Tragedy of Man which represents Tagirovsky's idea that each of us embodies Adam and Eve. To achieve this goal, the face of an actress and an actor are covered with mirror foil on the poster to reflect the spectators’ faces. As in the first six scenes the actors’ faces were painted in white and the whole play took place in a museum, statue-like photos of the actors were taken and used in the project.
The Tragedy of Man performed by Laboraturium Animae was staged in full; a masterpiece just like an exhibited object in a museum reflecting the author’s romantic view of life, the historical context, and the patriarchy of his age. It is a trace of a lost time in which we can recognize our own age. On the stage the scenes turned to museum installations: a nine-hour-long ceremony where the past (the time of our fathers and grandfathers) — and the present met. The play was a fusion of theatre, film, museum, and music. During the performance we all became Adam and Eve in the crowd around us.
Credit
Organized by: Ferenczy Museum Center
Director: Sardar Tagirovsky
Photos: Balázs Deim, Kevin Campean
