KÁRPÁTI, PÉTER - AKÁRKI
KÁRPÁTI, PÉTER - AKÁRKI
Everyman
(1993. Morality in 2 parts, prose. Characters: 5 men, 5 women)
Kárpáti attempts to present both the everyday, mundane life of one of our contemporaries, while also broadening this fate into a universal experience. The protagonist of his play is Everyman, a type borrowed from the medieval morality plays. More so: this Everyman is a woman, a divorced, sloppy, careless person, who suddenly fines out that she is lethally ill. She is shocked, and suddenly everything becomes important to her that she had neglected until then, all of a sudden she wants to see everything clearly and setting things right, only to realize that her life had been tragically empty. She did not care about other people at all, nor about herself, for that matter, her days went by following some cold, mechanical order. She lived her life, a life she did not know how to live, but which she would like to learn now.
Péter Kárpáti was born on 5 April 1961 in Budapest. He graduated as a dramaturge from the University of Theatre and Film. He also works as a dramaturge and a teacher. He was awarded the Madách Prize in 1998 and the József Attila Prize in 2006. His plays are unique works which do not fit follow any Hungarian or international trend. Instead of a transparent, tight structure there are several theatrical layers superposed, which create a dramatic texture. Going beyond the known dramatic conventions, he brought to life a new genre, in which narrative and action do not separate but blend into a harmonic unity, where the sole limit of events is imagination.