What the spectators say about us

🔗 A poem inspired by "Burnout"

Inspired by the very powerful play "Burnout"

Svetlin Ivanov

Burnout
we rush our whole lives to slow down
to slow down
someday
lifeless
and ugly
and what
when
we
are
connected
connected
to devices
to decide
instead
of
us
what
is
simple
it
would
be
simple
for
them
to
be
beautiful
to
share
on
the-net makeup
shopping
and
plants
the
complex
will
always
be
for
us
we
are
not
very
necessary
lively
daily vigils


🔗 Margarita Toteva for the performance "Burnout" by Veselka Kuncheva

I was in the second row. Frogs, actors and truths fly there. Literally. Burnout is in 3D, and at high speed. Purification - too.

I kept telling myself that this is just theater. But it is not. This is a chronicle, a confession and a warning. "Burnout" is a compass in a labyrinth in which the choice is fictitious, and the new deity is called Goal, it is thirsty and demands sacrifices. Even if someone sees that life is for awakened living, this is not expedient and the insight is erased, and the person is eliminated. Through burnout. It is not scary to illustrate our world, nor to ironize it, nor to dissect it. What is scary is the prophetic "You are gone, you are gone..."


Very mercifully and predictably, the play is being performed for the first time in July. Now, summer lulls our burned-out fears and blurs our pandemic past. "If the past faints in your brain, cut it out." (These words sound on the empty stage before we see the actors.)
We have all paid and will pay a high price, and its contributions are called strains. But if "Burnout" is a play inspired by what happened to us after March 2020, there has been not only burnout, but also catharsis.


Even if we apply a 50th factor of peace to our souls, "Burnout" will burn them to ashes. But it will lead them through the labyrinth, the warning and the prophecy to the simple truths: "I will not die before I meet myself with myself, before I pour sand into my bosom, before I see that there is no tomorrow. And instead of putting my eyes in my pocket, I will meet the sun with them".
The actors play "Burnout" in a state of flow. Only I don't know how to say this in Bulgarian. But the spectacle must be seen. Missing it is harmful to our health. Like burnout.

https://www.facebook.com/margo.b.toteva/posts/3529529987150725


Margarita Toteva for the performance "Fear" by Veselka Kuncheva and Ina Bozhidarova

The world is at war and I don't want to put a flower on my helmet like Yovkov's Lyutskan, but I feel like talking about theater a lot after yesterday's "Fear" at the Stara Zagora Puppet Theater.

Created 6 years ago, carried on the wings of Icarus, capturing in minutes the projections of fear through all the stages of life and the times after it, "Fear" exposes fears, gives them names, lines and bodies - of a boy, a man and ... a dead man.


The play contains politics, psychology, history... They all gather the sins of fear in an endless chronology - from childhood and all the steps after it to the end (and beyond). Each stage is accompanied by the corresponding fear, just as the little child in the song is sent by a ladybug all the way home. ("Early today we went hunting with dad in the forest, and a ladybug sent us with mom to the door.")
Nowhere before have I seen three projections played simultaneously - the beginning, middle and end of a human life - on one stage, at one moment, in front of one spectator's gaze, repeated throughout the hall, in one rhythm and with equal force.


Real life is spared from this – we can come out of one fear and fall into the next, but we cannot enter the same fear twice, because we are different and elsewhere on our path. That is why we are protected from experiencing all fears simultaneously.
The main chronicler of fear, who remembers all the times he died, has not managed to reach a state of shuddering, to make his voice and movements heavy with fear, clumsy, bored, having passed to the other side of life. And of fear. I wanted him to be like that. Maybe that is how it should be. And maybe this is the only form of hope that the director has given us.


I won't talk about fears like the Golgotha ​​of the Soul. The Annunciation is an additional nail. It's enough for me that the Soul survives or is resurrected, I don't know.
What is the ending of "Fear"? It's a good thing I was at a theater with a qualified interpreter of this ending. I wouldn't have understood it otherwise. Simply because there is none. The finale is attached to the organic fabric of the performance to bring the viewer out of a state of numbness - the natural atmosphere of fear. An artificial dance with artificial smiles-grimaces of the actors, imitation of cheerful sounds that would return us to the obligatory illusion of theater and remind us from the collective bow on the stage that it is time for applause.


Sincere! Encore! Resurrected from our fears and purified by them! The audience did not applaud fear, but a stage play, as precise as a scalpel that amputates fear.
At least for a while.
***
"Lyutskan looks at the ground and sees no trace of the chrysanthemum, he also looks after the soldier. His eyes are filled with tears.
- What's wrong? - asks Karakolev, who has just arrived.
- My flower is being trampled. People don't do anything to it, but he... Step on it, man! - And Lyutskan bursts into tears, as he once cried when they slammed his bowler hat into the ground and pulled the skirts of his frock coat. If anyone else had been in Karakolev's place, he would have laughed out loud. But the hunter knew Lyutskan well, and he was hungry and terribly angry.
- Tell me who it is! Just tell me who it is! - he shouted. "
Today the world is war.
And fear.

https://www.facebook.com/margo.b.toteva/posts/4202784969825220


"The Other" at State Puppet Theatre - Stara Zagora

Tonight I watched “The Other” – one of the most beautiful performances I’ve seen for months.

Staging is made by Yancho Ivanov; Musical settings by Plamen Petkov, stage design by Elitsa Stoyanova and Desislava Ilcheva. Casts: Elitsa Stoyanova, Desislava Ilcheva, Delyan Kyosev, Kaloyan Georgiev and Stanislav Matev.

I’ve watched and I was entirely “inside” the performance thinking at the same time “what a nice music”. And how touching this man was so uncouth with his patched-up coat! I can’t believe it – such an intelligent and elegant performance in Stara Zagora. And I wanted to hug these actors – each and every one of them. And I’m so proud of knowing Yancho. We say hello to each other and he’s the man who created this… magnificent!

And I totally would watch it again and again, every time.

I don’t have the words to explain it. The performance is telling about an ordinary day of an ordinary man which cracks like a pomegranate where the multiple stories are just like grains. I’ve been thinking also about me – about my dreams that raise me and the illusions that eat me up. And I laugh because it was witty, unexpected and funny. But mostly I was happy because of the actors who knew how I feel, who were not afraid to talk about those “heavy” things that worried me.

Actually they do not “talk”. There are only lights and shadows and people who look like cartoons, really! And music! But no words except in the beginning.

Of course I’ve cried at the end despite the make-up, despite the fact I wanted to be pretty. Well I was pretty, full with wonderful emotions, with wings on my back and humming.

Definitely you need to watch “The Other” in State Puppet Theatre – Stara Zagora. Even if you’re not from the same town. I’m sure you deserve such a pleasure.

It’s great!

By Maria