ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
Mitko Todorov, BAT President
‘Taking into consideration all that happened during the festival history, I should say that I have very serious expectation of this edition. We, the theatre-involved people, are a bit adventurers. It happened that we started to do some things without the necessary resources. We have undertaken some festival editions without making sure that our budget would sustain. From Varna Summer ’06, I expect both a satisfied audience and satisfied participants. I expect a big interest in the international participation. I also hope to have a successful final because every member of the team does a good job. I think that it is time to think about the festival formula, which will provide the maximum access to the performances that the citizens of Varna have opted for.’
Dafinka Danailova, Director of Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre
‘Due to my concerns about our theatre, I did not have the time to take a big look at the festival program. I hope that I will be able to experience many happy moments and to get a purely professional pleasure from these performances. I believe that this contact with the art of my colleagues will bring me a true artistic pleasure. I count on the festival performances to keep on forming a better and more modern theatrical taste to Varna’s audience. Because, even if not so much visibly and categorically, the theatre language changes and the conservative thinking is a serious barrier to the perception of these changes. That’s why I rely upon the festival assistance.’
Nikolay Yordanov, Executive Director of Varna Summer Festival
‘We meet challenges throughout the year because a festival is done with many unknowns. For instance, the uncertainty about what the theatre season will be and what might be invited from the worldwide stages, because, of course, the selection is restricted by the resources available. These are the two basic obstacles to be overcome by every festival promoter. For me in person, the design of any festival program passes through a plenty of psychological barriers that must be overcome in the thinking of so many people that such a cultural forum depends on. Finally, when the program is ready, when you succeeded in procuring the invitations made you feel satisfied and you hope that the spectators will be also happy with what they will see. I would mention our permanent collaboration with the British Council. We have been working with most various partners and sponsors who made possible the coming of a performance like Arpad Schilling’s The Seagull. This is a very provocative and a very different director. I am glad that we could invite the Brazilian performance Rehearsal. Hamlet directed by Enrique Diaz and, of course, the Romanian Twelfth Night directed by Silviu Purcarete. Bulgarian performances not entering Dimitar Chernev's selection are mostly a product of the choice made by the festival Artistic Director Mrs. Tsvetana Maneva and, of course, by the whole team. We try to invite the performances outlining some trends in contemporary theatre.
Tsvetana Maneva, Artistic Director of Varna Summer International Theatre Festival
I could comment on the 14th festival once it is over. How the program is perceived is of especial importance. Mostly the international participation, which is very strong this year. I wish there were a response, echo from the audience, by the specialist and our colleagues, only then I could draw-up a balance sheet. The selected Bulgarian performances show the realistic image of the production from the season. The entire team is led by the ambition to present the absolutely objective present condition of our theatre. The development of a festival depends on the production involved. Its editions can never be equivalent. But for me, even in their non-equivalence, most performances maintain the line of some kind of quest and probing into. The result may not be categorical at any time. But all performances are categorical as an attempt to get out of the convention, to deviate from the stereotype. I think this is the best mission that this forum may fulfil.’
Mihail Mutafov, Actor, Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre
‘I have always liked this festival. It causes us to make comparisons between our performances and the best of Bulgarian theatre. It maintains us in a tone. I think that the festival get increasingly better with every next year. I am especially interested in the foreign performances because otherwise, I would have difficulties in see them. The names of participating directors promise interesting things. I am looking forward them and I hope that they will be a pleasant surprise for me. I wish the festival success!’
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
Directed by Krikor Azaryan, Theatre Bulgarian Army
31 and 1 June, Main stage
Boyka Velkova, Actress
‘I am very happy I could touch this text and that I have been working with Krikor Azaryan because I think that this is one of the most sophisticated and interesting women’s roles in the worldwide dramaturgy. I am grateful for being given this opportunity and I made my best efforts to. I tried to understand the role. I will be glad if I have excited the audience. The role is very difficult and sophisticated. I have difficulties to tell about myself because there are levels that I don’t know whether I have attained. Now I play two strong characters of American dramaturgy – Blanche of A Streetcar Named Desire and Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf. Both roles have a kind of relation because both of them are women at the edge of the degradation. Alcoholized but sensible and spiritual at the same time. They have many points of touch but are different because Blanche is more sensible and tender and I tried to translate this while Martha is more brutal, categorical and more primary. I touched the Liz Strasbourg’ school that deals with the detail and the sensitivity that surrounds us and helps the actor to achieve extreme depths and plans in the characters. This does not mean that I do this in the play. One cannot do much for three months but yet, I use what I learned there wherever I can. I think about these things and I try to put my knowledge in many of my roles. The method represents a total submersion in the circumstances and a painful development of all senses. This maintains you extremely awake on the stage and makes the characters deeper and unexpected.'
Stefka Yanorova, Actress
‘This role was a great change for me at first because this is the second time I work with professor Azaryan who was my professor at the university. The rehearsal process itself was extremely interesting. I am very happy that the performance worked out because it is a great emotion both for us to play and for the audience. I think that this is just its main feature – being exciting. As to me, it moves me by many things and mostly by the treachery topic - that one is able to betray his or her closest person and unfortunately, this is not always justified by a good cause.’
Aleksander Dimov, Actor
‘Working on this performance was very interesting for me. This is the first time I play at this theatre. I am very glad of having been invited. During rehearsals, I learned many things from the great actors starring and this collaboration was a kind of a manual for me. This was very interesting. I have had much fun and I keep having fun. The acquaintance with Boyka Velkova was very important for me. The actors helped me much but this help was not obsessing but friendly.'
Kamen Donev, Actor
‘There is always a kind of surprise when working with professor Azaryan. A Streetcar Named Desire is not an exception. The very fact that he finally opted for me (there were other variants for the role), for an actor known to play comedy is already a surprise. Such a choice was not only a challenge for me but also a chance to look at this character from another point of view because Stanly Kowalski is a character quite strongly imposed by Marlon Brando. This is a seriously binding cinema emblem. I was far away from the thought of fighting to destroy it. Professor Azaryan and I simply wanted to look at Stanly like a boy who, like many others in America, works all the day long. He earns his money with the sweat of his brow, he is a bit unrefined, somewhat coarse, he likes cards, beer but mostly loves his wife. Unless harmony but at least some understanding reigns in their family because their love is strong. We wanted to look at Kowalski not as a evil-doer but as a man bearing both good and evil, expressivity, sensibility and aggression. In this sense, Stanly Kowalski is not what people may be expecting – the typical American man smoking his cigar and the constant cowboy’s image.’
REVIEWS
Hristo Hristov, actor, Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre
‘The performance is very interesting. I think that Krikor Azaryan’s work is very good, such as the work of Boyka Velkova and of our young colleague Kamen Donev. I saw the same play version many years ago at the Army Theatre but, of course, it sounds a different way at every time. Tonight, it sounded in a very personal way for me. In what I saw, the focus is the individual everybody’s fate, woven in the feelings of the various characters. I found it very sad. This performance brings me a kind of particular sadness as if there is no optimism, no exit. It looks like man's degradation is previously set and it is very difficult to run away from your fate.'
Aleksander Ilindenov, Actor and Director, Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre
‘I am biased because professor Azaryan is my teacher. I have been always very pleased with his sensibility, his view to the world and the atmosphere he succeeds to translate. I see that there are some “new things” in this performance, things that I have neither seen in the play when I have read it nor in the film with Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. This was very pleasant for me and I think that the entire audience felt this sensibility of him, this view – somewhat sad but also smiling – so specific to Azaryan.’
EXULTET
Staged and directed by Mariusz Kozubek, Theatre A, Gliwice, Poland
31 May, the place in front of the theatre
WE SPEAK WITH ALL OUR HEARTS
Piotr Chipalski, actor and art manager
Theater A has one core of nine people, who live and work together all the time. We do things like Exultet – inspired by the Bible and the Medieval mystery, but also musical and drama performances. For the different shows we invite people who work with us – actors, dancers musicians from all over Poland.
The idea in Exultet is to give the audience some mystery, to give some beauty. I think that one of the most important things for our theatre is to search for truth, to search for beauty, for harmony. In the theology the God is split to truth, beauty and good. Searching for one of them is a way of searching God. We don’t say: “You must believe in our God, you must believe the way we believe”, we just want to show some piece of work which is interesting, which is beautiful.
This is a private theatre, which just wants to find the beginning of all the shows in the things we think that are important, that are in our hearts. We found that every start is somehow in the Bible. Then comes the culture. Then our lives, our experiences, our ideas combine in our shows. It’s just about us in a way. It is to find the most universal way.
We use all we can use on the street, in the street theatre, to find way to show some beauty, to invite the people to this mystery we are trying to create. We don’t want to tell no theology, but to speak with our hearts. To find the images that are in people’s hearts – water, fire, all this which happens in this show is somehow anchored in heart, anchored in soul. Combined together it can make a story without words – in Exultet there are no words.
For us the art is more important than the money, so we often work in very bad conditions. And we don’t know if we will be still performing the next few years. But what we have more than the big companies is that after the performance we can hug and we know that we made it together.
Mariusz Kozubek, script and direction
Sometimes people come to me and say “I have become a better man” and we are very happy. Once on a festival after the performance, two drunken men came and said to us: “It is lovely. Now we will send our children to church”. That is not our idea. We want to do what we feel in the way that we feel it. We think that truth could be found in very different places. We find it in our life and our destiny. We want to show that truth to the people and invite them to find their own.
REVIEW
By using fire and water as visual metaphors, the actors from Theatre A lead the spectators to a journey that is both religious and human with the whole romantics and sentimentality as our existence is capable of. Scrutinizing any mythological and biblical subject matters is always interesting, bearing the potential of a theatrical experience. The impression is that Theatre A reasons and make judgments on the topic of God and human within the trinity of a Christian paradigm but by using the tools of the Eastern philosophy and mystics in which fire and water are much more than designations. In this palette of emotional fire pictures, the spectators gathered at the place in front of the theatre were choosing entertainments and interpretations of their own. The fact that the rain drizzling over the fire did not make anybody to leave is a matter of course.
Vera Gotseva
BORIANA
Directed by Desislava Boeva, Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre
1 June, Second stage
Desislava Boeva, Director
‘I decided to work on Boriana at first because I like very much Yordan Yovkov as an author. Beside this, this text allows for a great freedom in reading without requiring any additional interventions. It allows for various interpretations. The other important reason was that I had the opportunity to work with the Varna Theatre team. The matters moving both me and the team in Boriana were family, the family relations and the topic of the sin and the absolution. Like every good text, this also has some provocative level of difficulty at first sight but it is pleasant for work. This is my debut performance and I started it with extremely much fear. I got a great support from the team and now my self-confidence is much bigger. It can never be complete but it is at a higher level now.’
Anastasiya Lyutova, Actress
‘I am very pleased to play in this performance. I feel a kind of freedom in. Since the first performance I felt that as the doors there restrict us in some form after the director’s work, I don’t feel a kind of a prison, which I have to live in. Boryana is actually a classic character but I do neither feel myself burdened by any relevant layers nor by any ideas that I have to destroy. I approached this text with a clean mind and I was looking for what moves me in person, what I find significant. That’s not to be a slave to any prejudices in our life and to go without any damnable attitude to the people. And they have to be loved, understood and to believe in good. The team I've been working with was a provocation for me. We did the performance with every one of the actors, everybody had his or her point of view, with the character who stands in front of you. This is the provocation – you stand in front of some people that you have to fight against, you to change them or them to change you. This is the live theatre. During rehearsals, without understanding how, something changes in you, you find new things in yourself. The Askeer award I got for this role means more responsibility for me for what I will do now on. Being noticed by somebody, being appreciated, being reminded that there are eyes looking at you at any time make you keep on look for, for keeping on being watched and on being interesting.’
Kancho Kanev, Actor
‘This is the second time I work with Desi Boeva and this is very interesting. She is a director who experiments. She knows what she is looking for and this is a great advantage. In general, it is a great pleasure to work with her. This made me come as far as here. I was very surprised by the group. I can tell only most wonderful things about the actors. Rehearsing with them gave me a great pleasure. I learned a lot of things from the work with them and I am very grateful to them. I usually do not like the things I do; I always think that there is more to achieve but now I know I am on the right way. The spectators should judge on how much we have achieved our maximum.'
REVIEW
‘Dessislava Boeva’s Boriana is a very strong debut showing strong theatrical but not literal thinking. This is a very conceptual performance with bright figurativeness and a strong actors’ presence. A classic Bulgarian dramaturgical text staged in a modern way, with an influencing and seizing staging solution. A play about oppression and vitality, about the darkness that pulls you down and what may, like baron Munchausen, draw you up by your hairs.’
Ani Vaseva
A FAIRY-TALE FOR THE SINGING TREE
Dramatized and directed by Slavcho Malenov, Varna State Puppet Theatre
1st June, Puppet Theatre
Krassimir Dobrev, Actor
The performance A Fairy-tale For the Singing Tree was awarded seven prized at the Golden Dolphin festival. It is directed and dramatized by Slavcho Malenov after a L. Hoffman’s fairy-tale. We did it last year and we have played it at many places with a very big success. The auditoria are always full. The fairy-tale is wonderful. We have not made such a magic performance for a long time past. Puppet theatre is a magic for both children and adults. The puppet performances are always a holiday for the children but also for us, the puppeteers, because we are children that have grown up and we feel this day (the 1st of June) as a special holiday of us.’
THUMBELLINA
Directed by Vera Stoykova, State Puppet Theatre, Varna
1 June, Puppet Theatre
LET’S TEACH CONTEMPLATION TO CHILDREN
Vera Stoykova, Actor and Director
‘The first thing to lead me in my work on the performance was the understading of the fairy-tail. Andersen is an unique author by his expression and style and his fairy-tales are in no way elementary. He wanted to be a playwright all his life. His fairy-tales are developed as dramaturgy – the action, the characters change very quickly, as if everything happens on a small stage – of the “magic box”, as he called it, being in love with when he was a child. That’s why, for Andersen’s 200th anniversary, I wanted to make a performance, in which Andersen would be present to teach children that fairy-tales are not only a sheet of paper but are born in the great writers’ fantasy. There are only four sentences of direct speech in the original text of Thumbellina, which means that Andersen did not need to have his characters speaking. This led to the idea to do something like a music story. With this performance I want to teach children to contemplate. Because when contemplating one starts to think, to use his or her judgment. Is there any better time for learning this than childhood?’
The celebrations on the occasion of the 85th anniversary of Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre take place within the festival.
The film Interval Or A Diary of a Day at Drama Theatre, Varna was projected on 1 June at the Archaeological Museum, Varna. The film is produced by Bulgarian National Television, Varna Regional Centre. The idea is by Georgi Toshev, cameraman Emil Zhupov and directed by Dobri Dobrev.
Georgi Toshev
'What does the film tell about?'
‘Interval is a documentary story about the daily life of one of the most curious modern Bulgarian theatres. A theatre that celebrates its 85th anniversary and has not lost its curiosity.’
‘Why did you call it Interval?’
‘Because the interval is a time for a cigarette, some rest, concentration or relax.’
‘The interval is the time in which the actor is about to resume the dialogue with the audience.’
‘What is your foundation to build your film story on?’
‘On one day from theatre’s life. Through the view of the long-term doorman Petar, we take a look behind the theatre scenes. His experiences and expectations, disappointments and beliefs linked to theatre's past and future move the film action ahead.’
‘Interval does not pretend to be a benefice, a holiday celebration film. Interval is a document of what happens one day in 2006 at Varna Theatre. The film takes the spectator behind-the-scenes to reveal him some rehearsing secrets, to show the actors beyond the theatrical vanity and to represent the people who remain anonymous in the theatre process. Interval is a declaration of love to theatre.’
On the occasion of the 85th anniversary of Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre, the new entrance of the Second stage was inaugurated on 1 June at 18:30. The ribbon was cut by Varna's Mayor Kiril Yordanov and the Director of the theatre, Dafinka Danailova.
GUESTS
Waldemar Jacek Kotomsky, Consul of Republic of Poland in Varna
‘Our collaboration with the festival is too recent. The Executive Director Nikolay Yordanov and I agreed to collaborate next year. I believe that the future will be very good because this is a very interesting festival. I think that tonight we saw a very intriguing Polish performance. We already think of the next festival edition.’
Ivan Dobchev, Director, Sfumato Theatre Workshop
‘I think that the festival displays the most accurate picture, it somehow scans the theatre situation in Bulgaria. This happened, this was well done, and these were the effects, the defects. Maybe, there is no trend. All is so multicolored. Actually, there is a modern trend in the selection I worry about (the Sfumato performances are not a part of selection but are specially invited). This is the aptitude to omnivorousness, to “that’s-the-situation”. To take the audience in at any price, to please the audience, to make it laugh. This is a kind of culture. For instance, Wong Kar Wai in Cannes awards films that he does not do at all. He awards the Golden Palm to a social and political film while he is a director doing absolutely aesthete’s exercises. This is also a kind of a guard, some kind of an intellectual challenge. Provoking the mass taste, provoking the inertia. Unfortunately, there is nothing like this now. There was some in the past. Varna Summer was a demonstration of that. I hear speaking about three interesting foreign performances. This is the thing bearing air to the big festivals. Varna had earned such an image long ago. This is a festival to show performances seen at the big European festivals. This festival is actually one of them. I wish not to restore any things that we have already experienced and seen.’
Kamelia Nikolova, Drama specialist
‘I think that the program of the foreign performances is very good, ambitious and adequate to what that, in general, is presently shown in European theatre. I could see some of the performances at some international festivals and they were amongst the best plays. I specifically want to outline the presence of one of the theatre hits during last two or three years - Arpad Schilling's The Seagull. This performance "subordinated" all big festivals and really made an incredible impression with his extremely laconic way in which it is done – as external vision, presentation, as text depth and infectiousness. This is a very intensive theatre - as a reading, as characters and relations going out of the text frames and seizing the auditorium. The other interesting performance is of Ursula Martines that I could see at the Edinburgh last festival. It is one of the renowned one man show performers. She involves in a very inventive way the multimedia, the living theatre and something that our audience does not use to see – the very active contact with the spectators. This is a performer who is in a continual contact with the audience, commenting her own life, her fears and the projections she shows behind her back. I hope that the performance will be successful here because it relies on the contact, on the communication. The British guest-staring is also important from the viewpoint of showing a new kind of theatre in which we do not have sufficient traditions and it comes as "news" in this sense. A roundtable will take place within the festival entitled The Classic: The Universal Theatre Code. The provocation came from the fact that we see a strong return to classics in modern theatre. This is a look at what happens, that must be commented out if we want to be adequate to. Why The Classic: The Universal Theatre Code? The interesting is that just today, where there is an active desire to open the theatre cultures one to another, to ensure their active movement and exchange between them, besides the dance theatre, another serious step in this direction are the performances based on a classical text. In this sense, across European Community in general, we have a common culture and common codes to understand each other and they are at a high degree collected in the classical works. Just this is our idea to take a look at how the performances that we will see at the festival work as such a universal code.'
DAY 3
Ursula Martinez – London, UK
O.A.P. (OLD AGE PENSIONER)
Directed by Mark Whitelaw
2 June, Second stage
Ursula Martinez, Actress
O.A.P. is the last performance of a theatre trilogy, the subject of which is the search of one’s own identity. A search in past, present and future. In this final phase, I try to answer the question how I see myself in the future. I cannot at all imagine how I would look like when I become old, how I will feel myself. We live in a society that increasingly deals with the external image and beauty. These are things that are linked to youth. Ageing and age are increasingly presented as a problem in England. Eve Pearce is my partner in the performance. I am most interested in the opportunity to investigate the people on the stage. It proves that sometimes an actor has more difficulties in being himself or herself than a person who is not an actor. Because actors have learned how to be other. One of Eve’s main provocations is to try to be herself as much as possible because she is a classic type of Shakespeare’s actress. Improvisation is the greatest thing in our work. Also, this performance relies much upon audience’s reactions. Of course, there is a conflict on the stage because theatre needs a conflict. In this case, the conflict is between me and the idea I have of what I will be in the future. I am quite impudent because I am young, stupid, paranoiac and obsessed by my fears. So, at some moments of the performance, I behave quite disgustingly and cruelly to my idea of old age. And yet, this must be understood as an expression of my foolishness. I think that when sometimes the older persons find that the performance has a non-respectful attitude to old age that’s because they did not perceive the humour and the big dose of self-irony I send to myself.
Eve Pearce, Actress
My participation in O.A.P. was a very interesting experience for me because it, at a great extent, is an improvised show without a prior screenplay. I remember, I have told to Ursula that it would be very useful to me if I could take a look at the screenplay and she replied that there was no screenplay and I was astounded. Definitely, there is a fixed and constant part in it. But if there is something to come in the mind of either of us while playing, we easily develop it and it becomes a part of our performance.
Jeremy Hill, HM Ambassador, Great Britain
We always like to present modern British art whether it is theatre, dance or music. It was wonderful that this year we were able to present a piece of modern theatre. I found it very challenging and very provocative. I was impressed by the reaction of the audience. All the audience seemed to be very engaged. It is truly a challenge to show this kind of performance. Some people obviously could understand English well but other had to listen to the interpretation and this is a big challenge both for the performance and for the audience. My impression was that everything worked very well and the audience responded very warmly at the end.
Desislava Stoycheva, Arts Projects Manager, British council
We saw this performance together with Kamelia Nikolova at the Edinburgh show case organized by the British Council. We both felt that it would be exciting for a very various audience, both with respect to the age but also people having various feelings and sensibility to this topic. The reaction of the Edinburgh audience was extraordinary. We believed that it would be accepted very well by Bulgarian audience too. Let’s hope they got satisfied. Looking at their reactions, it seemed to me that they were really perceiving the piece in a very enthusiastic way.
An exhibition was opened on 2 June at the City Library, From the Shumen Pozorishte to Drumev Theatre Days, on the occasion of the 150-year history of Bulgarian theatre
Varna Summer International Theatre Festival took part in the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the first Bulgarian performance, Mihal Mishkoed given in Shumen, by including the guest exhibition From the Shumen Pozorishte to Drumev Theatre Days into its parallel program. The exhibition host in Varna is Pencho Slaveykov Regional Library. Welcome words were told by Nikolay Yordanov, Executive Director of the festival, Kamelia Nikolova, senior research associate, Emilia Milkova, Director of Varna Regional Library and Kristiyana Dimcheva, library officer. The New Bulgarian Drama Association and Stoyan Chilingirov Regional Library, Shumen are the main exhibition promoters. Ekaterina Kolova, manager at the Art department presented the exponents, arranged in the thematic sections The Beginning…, The Initiator…, The Classic Authors…, Theatre Periodicals, Shumen Citizens in Theatre…, Books…, The Theatres…, The Professions…, The History and the Theory…, The Resumed Tradition… The exhibition includes old-printed first editions of plays from Bulgarian authors, manuscripts, first translations of theatre titles, first editions and publications of playwriting attempts in the periodic press, books dedicated to Bulgarian theatre’s history and the renowned person therein as well as illustrative materials. The exponents are taken from the funds of various cultural institutions in Shumen: Vasil Drumev Drama Theatre, Stoyan Chilingirov Regional Library, the Regional Museum of History, Episcope Konstantin Preslavski Shumen University, State Archiv, Dobri Voynikov Community Centre and Dobri Voynikov Museum house.
Within the 14th International Theatre Festival Varna Summer, Todor Ignatov’s stage design exhibition, Scenic Spaces, was opened to celebrate the 85th anniversary of Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre, Varna. On the occasion of his 55th anniversary and the 25 years of artistic activity, the author presents stage design models and sketches. The exhibition may be visited till 7 June.
The anniversary of Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre is reflected in two more expositions situated in the theatre space: Theatre in Varna, with curator Rumyana Dimitrova, presenting original pictures and documents from the Varna State Archive funds with respect to the foundation of the municipal theatre company in 1921 and Emil Penchev’s photo exhibition, To Take a Picture of Theatre. It is made up of two parts – The Actors at Close, exhibiting 23 portraits of the actors of Varna theatre, and The Stage, The Performances, including shots of 14 performances created on the stage of Varna Theatre during the period of 2003 – 3005. Both exhibitions may be seen in the foyers of Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre.
DAY 4
TWELFTH NIGHT
Directed by Silviu Purcarete, Marin Sorescu National Theatre, Craiova, Romania
3 June, Main stage
Mircea Cornisteanu, Director of the theatre
This Purcarete’s performance is invited to participate in the Shakespeare’s festival Gyula in Hungary, in Shakespeare’s festival in Bath, England where we played seven times. In Tel-Aviv, in August we will participate in the great Shakespeare’s festival in Gdansk, we are invited to England and Holland. The title of our performance is not Twelfth Night as given in the program but What You Will or The Last Holiday Night. In Romania and also in Bulgaria “Twelfth Night” does not say anything; it could easily be the fifteenth night as well. We must understand what this twelfth night means in the Catholic countries. This is the last night of the winter holidays at the end of the year. You may see how people feel after twelve days of drinking, sleeplessness, love. Everybody is very tired, bewildered, everything is stirred-up, genders are mixed up. That's why, our performance is very melancholic. It bears the feeling of the end of a very difficult period in people's life. The rhythm of the performance is the rhythm of some very, very tired people. The end of a time.
Ilie Gheorghe, Actor
Towards the actors, Silviu Purcarete behaves as a teacher and a friend. His authority is hard to be noticed. At the beginning of rehearsals he invents plays, jokes that set up the performance direction. We have been working for two weeks at the theatre library without dealing with the performance text. We set up situations that Purcarete uses as starting points to further develop the performance. We were very pleased to work together in a similar atmosphere. The bookshelves of this library served us for the performance stage design.
Mircea Cornisteanu
Since 1994 the National Theatre of Craiova Marin Sorescu is a member of one of the largest European networks – European Theatre Convent. I am General Secretary of this network. There is one more theatre network in Europe – European Theatre Union. The projects are funded by European Union. Thirty-two theatre companies from twenty-two countries are members of our network but there are no Bulgarian theatres yet, unfortunately. I don’t know why. One of my tasks is to invite new members. If you invite me to see any Bulgarian performance I could propose any of your theatres for a member of our network because I think you do good theatre.
Ilie Gheorghe, Actor
I work with Purcarete over past 15 years, I have participated in 10 of his performances in various countries and I think I am a very lucky fellow. We are always glad when he comes to stage a play at our theatre. One of the most successful periods of Craiova’s theatre was when Purcarete has been working there for 7 years. Today Silviu Purcarete became a universal name all over the world. Directors like him may be counted on the fingers of one hand. He is the total author of the performance. He creates each and every component thereof – to start from the stage design, costumes and music to the entire stage production. That’s why his performances are so consistent and completed. His creator’s position reflects very strongly on the audience. I have learned much from him; he produces a strong effect on me and gives me a very powerful energy. He taught me how to collect this energy and to keep it in a relation to my mind. There is nothing of excess in his work on the stage. He thinks that the stage production must be very concise, economical and directly addressed. Purcarete is a great teacher. He loves the actors very much, which is rare to find in a director. Every time he starts his work from the actor on the stage. In his director’s instructions he always proceeds in a way to make the actor feel uneasily. Most stage versions of Twelfth Night are decided in a comic key. Nevertheless, Purcarete’s Twelfth Night is a very sad performance. People feel sad after seeing it and complain of their unhappiness to their closest persons. And the dwarf-elves from the performance wander in their minds. They are a mark of what happens in characters’ minds. This way, the performance becomes much more realistic because melancholy, sadness, unhappiness – these are very strong intimate feelings that are very difficult to be interpreted by the actors.
Catalin Baicus, Actor
I have a very strange feeling of the play in this performance because everything in it is as in a dream. Purcarete wanted from us to speak in a way like coming from another time and space. This was the most difficult for us. We started from the simplest thing and arrived at the result you saw.
Romanita Ionescu, Actress
In Purcarete's performance, Orsino is an old man. The main idea is that love is irrational. You fall in love with somebody without understanding why, regardless of his or her age or appearance. You simply fall in love. This performance is out of time and space. It is very personal for me; it touches something very deep in myself. Every time, before I go out on the stage, I ask myself whether I may tell these words in front of all those people in the auditorium or I have to run away. Sometimes I think that it is even too personal. On one hand, the performance is very ironical but on the other, it is very sad because finally, nobody has his or her love fulfilled.
RESPONSE
One cannot speak immediately after this performance; the impressions have to settle down. This is a very styled and elegant performance, made with a lot of taste. And containing a feeling of the surreal at the same time. But if we give it the label of a kind of surrealism, we will expose ourselves to internal self-irony. It bears something of Shakespeare’s manierism, of his baroque nature with its feeling of world’s deceitfulness and illusoriness as well as the fine interweaving of fun and dramatic.
Romeo Popiliev, Theatre Critic
A meeting with the actress Vesela Kazakova was held on 4 June at the Festival and Congress Centre. At last Moscow film festival she was awarded the best actress award Silver Saint George Prize for best actress in Radoslav Spasov’s film Stolen Eyes. The film was preceded by the projection of the film Red Riding Hood directed by Valentina Dobrincheva, production of NATFA, 2002 she casts in.
Vesela Kazakova, Actress
This is the first time that it happens to be to be a guest of a festival for simply presenting myself, without having any participation. I will be outspoken at this meeting. There were no arrangements and scenarios for it. I wish there was a good discussion but not me to tell something and people to feel nervous about asking questions. I wish we discussed the things that excite them and the things that excite me not only as an actress but also as a person. I imagine it will be easy to. The exciting is that a short film will be projected that is my first work. I was a second or a third year student at NATFA when we did it. The firm is by Valentina Dobrincheva who was a pre-graduate in cinema production in Georgi Dyulgerov’s class at that time and is named Red Riding Hood. In some sense, this role predetermined my star part in A Leaf in the Wind for which I was awarded the Nevena Kokanova Prize for a debut because the director Svetoslav Ovcharov is Valentina’s teacher. And namely, watching this film, he decided to invite me for the star part. Actually, Red Riding Hood is my first steps in cinema. I played together with Hristo Garbov and Vyara Kolarova. I have not seen the film for long and feel a bit nervous about how I play there notwithstanding this is the favorite film of the moderator of this meeting, the cinema critic Bozhidar Manov that I star in.
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