How can an ordinary employee, seemingly even an inconspicuous person, suddenly become a destructive, dangerous force for society? The answer is at the premiere of director Oskar Korshunov's play "The Madman" based on Nikolai Gogol's work. Having experienced the world premiere in the place where the performance was shown and created - in the Catalonia region of Spain, rocked by political upheavals, the artists return to Lithuania, where the fascism of normality takes hold and the local crazies start to rage.
According to the director, N. Gogol, a Ukrainian classicist who lived in the 19th century, now seems to be an accurate and competent political commentator of today, analyzing the situation both in Lithuania and throughout Europe.
"It's a prophetic short story about the nature of fascism, about the desire to transform the world and the obsession with grandeur. This happened with the great dictators of the 20th century. Now the whole world is obviously becoming puritanical, everything is regulated, even the presumption of innocence is no longer valid, as if the time is coming again in western civilization when you want to "cleanse yourself". There were quite a few such historical periods. It would be enough to remind Sparta, the Inquisition, fascism, well, we still remember Soviet "justice". You don't have to look far for examples. Let's say that in Lithuania, two years of imprisonment is threatened for the "grass" swindler, or it is even proposed to introduce forced treatment in a psychiatric hospital. Books are disposed of, magazines are ripped off, classics are censored, and anonymous complaint lines are created. And all this in the name of justice and normality", says O. Koršunovas.
"N. The relevance of Gogol's prophecies and texts today is simply incredible. If in the 19th century, when the work was written, the idea that France would become a Muslim country might have seemed like complete madness, it does not seem so today. The great inquisitor predicted by N. Gogol has obviously already arrived. And this is the Internet, social networks in which we control each other in one way or another, as well as developing technologies that already recognize our needs and offer us faster realization of them. They are already educating us in this way. In the future, they will also offer us punishments. Already today they are gaining supremacy over the law. A Facebook message can have a stronger moral impact than legal institutions. Basically, the Internet, which initially offered us knowledge and freedom, reduces our need to think and becomes a kind of straitjacket", continues O. Koršunovas.
"And sometimes you don't even need to interpret - just read and understand. Isn't this text by N. Gogol relevant now in Lithuania: "After all, there are so many examples in history: someone simple, not that a nobleman, but some kind of townsman or even a peasant - and suddenly it turns out that he is some kind of great person, and the next time even a ruler . If it comes out of a man like this next time, then who can come out of a nobleman?", concludes O. Koršunovas.
