Notes of a Madman

Author: Nikolai Gogol

Director: Ovanes Torosyan

Set and Costume Design: Plamena Dicheva

Starring: Georgi Gotsin

The classic tragicomedy Notes of a Madman by Russian writer Nikolai Gogol is centered on the life of the little man in a large society.

The production reveals the life of such a man — Poprishchin — who is overlooked by fate and struggles for his dreams, ideals, and love. He is utterly ordinary, even somewhat simple, but is cruelly driven by his own thoughts to the edge of madness.

In the distorted reality in which we live, people do not look into the beauty of the human soul, but only at material status and position in society. It is precisely this “little” man who preserves the truly important things in the world and is the one who values kindness, humanity, truth, love, and beauty.

Poprishchin finds his love and, because of it, loses his reason, wandering somewhere between the injustice of the reality in which he lives and the unreal world he creates for himself. His instinct drives him to follow his heart, and it is precisely this that makes him not a “little” man living in a big world, but a “big” man for whom the world is small.

In Notes of a Madman, the question is raised whether the diary of this madman is proof of his diseased soul or of his suffering in a sick society. The madness that has taken hold of Gogol reveals to us a simple story of love that can drive a person mad.