One festival I regularly
attend and truly enjoy is the Varna Summer International Theatre Festival, held
during the first two weeks of June.
Varna is a city of nearly
400,000 inhabitants located on the coast of the Black Sea. It is a key tourist
destination in the region and serves as the seat of the Bulgarian Navy and the
country’s maritime trade. Since 1992, this seaside city has hosted Bulgaria’s
premier theatre festival, directed by Nikolay Iordanov in collaboration with
Kamelia Nikolova, both professors of theatre studies at Sofia University.
Although it may not regularly make headlines in international arts columns, it
remains a festival of quality and significant cultural weight, particularly in
its presentation of contemporary Bulgarian theatre through its showcase
program.
Over the years, I have
had the opportunity to witness numerous remarkable performances at this
festival, directed by prominent figures such as Jernej Lorenci, Viktor Bodó,
Chevi Muraday, Anne Nguye, Rabih Mroué, Romeo Castellucci, Gábor Tompa, and Silviu
Purcărete, among others.
As in previous editions,
this year’s 33rd festival, from June 1 to June 11, 2025, maintained a dual
structure: (a) a showcase of representative works from Bulgarian theatre, and
(b) an international program. The overarching thematic axis shaping most of the
program was “The Tragic in Contemporary Theatre,” a timely and resonant theme
reflecting the tumultuous state of the world today. As part of this focus, a
roundtable was organized in which I participated alongside colleagues from the
United States, Bulgaria, South Korea, and other countries.
In my presentation, titled “The Biopolitics of Contemporary Tragedy,” I spoke about tragedy as a vast archive of wars, traumas, conflicts, apocalyptic narratives, and experiences, an “album” of protagonists and antagonists positioned at the limits of things: at the edges of what is acceptable, at the boundaries of the city, of law, of morality. In this sense, I argued, their terrible and impious sufferings and passions concern precisely these limits, but at the same time, they also involve their questioning and transgression (see Antigone, Medea, Clytemnestra, Oedipus, Philoktetes, Orestes, and others). By continually testing these biopolitical limits, tragedy seeks to mark what it means to be human and to explore what constitutes an alternative life, a just life, a life worthy of mourning.
The questions posed are
the same questions we face today. Much has changed but the essence remains; hence,
the popularity of tragedy has endured among artists of all backgrounds and
identities. As the crisis of culture deepens, so, too, does the visibility of
the tragic dimension of both individuals and civilizations. As Susan Sontag
aptly observed, we live in an era in which tragedy is no longer merely a form
of art but also a form of history. The central issues which underlie tragedy are
best understood as a set of problems to be raised: Who asks the question? What dangers await the one who dares to ask? What are the responsibilities of the one who
raises the question?
These questions collectively
represent the true challenge to human communities across time.
Within this framework of
tragedy, the curatorial choices of this year’s festival were situated, some
more effective in their staging, others less so. Yet in every instance, each
production conveyed its own anxieties about the tragic condition of humanity
and the planet.
An Explosive Yet Tragic
Mother
Among the performances
that stood out to me was Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht, written in
1939, based on The Runagate Courage (1669), part of the novel Simplicius
Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen.
The production was staged
by the Satirical Theatre of Sofia, directed by the renowned Bulgarian director
Stoyan Radev, who, I should note, had just a few days earlier presented another
of his stagings, Hamlet, a production by the Bulgarian Army Theatre.
The ongoing popularity of
Brecht's works on the modern stage shows that they still resonate, communicate and
move audiences, though this does not mean they haven’t been negatively impacted
by the passage of time. No work escapes unscathed from the passage of years,
not even a masterpiece like Mother Courage, which many scholars consider
the greatest anti-war drama of the 20th century. Time reshapes or erases
everything, depending on the prevailing spirit and needs of each era (Zeitgeist).
Today’s world is far more complex, opaque and
fragmented than the one Brecht grappled with, an era rife with tensions and
contradictions, yes, but one with a clearer, more readable political and social
backdrop. Hence, the Marxist tools of analysis and deconstruction, grounded in
the logic of binary oppositions and absolute truths, were widely used at the
time. In the present era, however, strict binarity has lost its explanatory
power, as the logic of black and white and absolute truths has given way to
more nuanced and undefined categories and realities. As Heiner Müller once
said, Brecht was great, but anyone working with him today must go beyond him in
order for the work to remain relevant.
That said, I am not
arguing that the precious core of Brecht’s works, especially one like this, has
been lost. On the contrary, it is still there, provided one examines it with
patience and care and retools it in light of today’s concerns, in a world where
the constant televised broadcast of warfare has stripped war, both as a concept
and a reality, of the terror it inherently carries. War has become something
familiar, daily, just another spectacle for marketing and mass consumption,
both from the left and the right of the ideological spectrum.
Thus, Radev took this
epic tale of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and, without succumbing to
gimmicks or verbosity, without melodramatic outbursts or didactic crescendos,
without manipulation or the desire to shock, and without seeking rupture,
staged a direct, extroverted, accessible, and vivid production, skillfully
embracing Brecht’s philosophy of Verfremdung (alienation). At no point
did he strive for realism. He kept the mechanisms of theatrical construction
visible, used choral interludes as narrative bridges that break the action,
offering both breathing space and moments for reflection. He maintained a
deliberate looseness in how actors related to their roles, allowing Brecht’s
famed performative Gestus to emerge as originally envisioned, so that
the production's core themes of profiteering, the psychic cost of war, lost
humanity, the struggle for survival at any cost, and the commodification of
violence, could be seen clearly and communicated effectively.
At the heart of the cast,
literally ablaze with passion, and a fair share of madness, along with
confidence, was the talented and comedically gifted Albena Pavlova, who
delivered an Anna Fierling, known as Mother Courage, that was anti-heroic,
passionate, earthy, dynamic, greedy, cunning, at times brutish, foul-mouthed,
hard, practical, opportunistic, always battle-ready, and, above all, a Mother
who never loses her humor, even in the face of her own and others’ tragedies.
Irony, mockery, and sarcasm are part of her survival kit during her odyssey
through the combat zone. As a mother of three children, both victim and
perpetrator of the era’s biopolitics, both ruler and ruled, she sees the world
as it is and how it works, from within and without, gains knowledge, but unlike
a classic tragic hero, she does not change, self-reflect, or repent, much less
get punished. On the contrary, she becomes more stubborn, arrogant, and
determined. Not even the deaths of her children frighten her. Always present
within the tragic events, Pavlova’s Mother radiates searing energy to those
around her, and to the audience. She deservedly received the Icarus National
Theatre Award 2025 for Best Female Performance.
Also remarkable was the
performance of Nikol Georgieva. In general, the entire cast moved to the
rhythms of a defiant Mother heading blindly into the unknown. Exceptionally
effective and layered was the musical underscore by Milen Kukosharov, which
supported the twelve-member cast dressed in the costume designs of Svila
Velichkova.
The enormous metallic
wheel conceived by Nikolay Toromanov served not only as Mother Courage’s cart
but could also be seen as the wheel of harsh capitalism rolling over everything
in its path, profiting from war. One might also interpret it as a symbol of
fate turning; after all, Mother Courage is a gambler, possibly representing the
wheel of time and history, and history also turns. Here, on the main stage of
the National Theatre of Varna, history (re)turns with a vengeance, this time as
farce, validating the director’s choices and scenographic concept.
Can the world truly
change? That is the question which Brecht posed to his audience back then, and today’s
viewer must answer the same question. Wisely, the director leaves it to the
audience to ponder and, more importantly, to consider their role in the writing
of history. They are not free of
responsibility; Mother Courage might very well be the mother of us all. She
stands on stage for our sake; she is our representative. After all, war and
exploitation are not God’s but mankind’s curse, and it is mankind who goes to
the theatre: they are the audience.
Death and the Ploughman:
We All Owe a Death
Immediately afterward, I
witnessed for the second time, the first being at the National Theatre of Iași
in Romania, the highly original and captivating staging of the pre-Renaissance
German masterpiece Death and the Ploughman (1401) by Johannes von Tepl,
directed by the visual magician of Romania, Silviu Purcărete.
Of all his works I have
seen so far, in my view, this is one of his most innovative, both conceptually
and technically. It models how technology and live performance can merge
fruitfully through an imaginative handling of space, time, presence and absence,
in short, the very ontology of theatre. This production inimitably visualizes the
tragedy of death and the disappearance of physical bodies, bridging what was
and what is, the living and the dead, yet it also provides an additional
channel of understanding through the felt emotion of a central character.
Historical archives
typically tell us what happened and what individual people did, but they do not
usually describe how people felt. This late medieval text gives us precisely
that: how a farmer felt after losing his wife in an era when death was a daily
visitor in people’s lives. Let us not forget that between 1347 and 1352, death
claimed one-third of Europe’s population. Today, we have counselors, doctors,
psychologists and psychiatrists to help us process grief and control our fear
of death. Back then, the poor farmer had no one with whom to share his thoughts
and fears, except when striking up a conversation with his enemy, Death itself.
And Death, with raw bluntness and unflinching realism, reminds him: “From the
moment you are born, you are old enough to die.” In other words, we all end up
in the same place, so why live at all? The uneducated peasant replies: “Because
even though all is fleeting, to live and to love is the most precious thing.”
A common thread of
humanity runs across all eras and links mourning, trauma and defeat. “What
wrong have we done to you?” asks the peasant. “After pleasure comes the loss of
pleasure,” replies Death. Pain and suffering mark the end of love; sorrow marks
the end of joy. The answer is as simple and excruciating as that, from the
mouth of a master of biopolitical power.
It is no coincidence that
the author wrote this work immediately after his wife’s death on August 1, 1400;
it might easily represent his thoughts and reflections born from a traumatic
experience. The theatre maker might then ask: How does one represent inexpressible
pain theatrically? How does theatre embody that which is invisible or beyond
(death)? In addressing these questions, Purcărete triumphs. He masterfully uses
the full arsenal of theatre and technology to deliver a stunning performative
treatise, a “death seminar,” so to speak, a remarkable show set precisely on
the threshold between life and death, truth and illusion, the here and now and
there and then; now you see me, now you don’t. The reproduction
machine on one side, the live body on the other, disappearance is their common experience.
In seventy minutes,
Purcărete delivered a work of dazzling quality and technical precision in which
the viewer could scarcely tell what was real and what was virtual, where theatre
ended and the invisible theatre of death began.
This encompassed the dematerialization of the stage and the denial of
its present reality, while at the same time acknowledging its unsurpassed magic.
Andrei Cozlac’s video
work was nothing short of astonishing, while the musical score by the
director’s long-standing collaborator, Vasile Șirli, served as a model of
atmospheric subtlety and emotional resonance. The stage design by Dragoș
Buhagiar was at once minimalist and functional, comprising only a sofa, a bed
that doubles as a tomb, an armchair, a door, a refrigerator and a desk at which
the farmer, portrayed with exceptional depth by the outstanding lead actor
Călin Chirilă, types out his thoughts: Truth or fiction? Does it really matter
in the end? What truly counts is the overall quality of the endeavor. In sum,
the performance was truly remarkable.
The director wisely chose
to transform the original dialogue into an interior monologue, thereby
deepening the philosophical inquiry at the heart of the original work. In his
interpretation, all elements functions dually, mirroring the very nature of
theatre itself: image and corporeal presence, ghost and materiality. Everything
appears and disappears. Nothing remains fixed long enough to be grasped or
rationalized. Life is transient; everything is uncertain, a phantom.
Representation is
challenged by the fluidity of theatrical boundaries; presence is interrupted by
the incursion of the image. What are we truly witnessing? Could it be our own
death, a presence that dwells within us regardless?
As disturbing as the idea
may be, it remains unchanged: all living beings owe a death, just as every
performance, the moment the stage lights rise, sets out to fulfill its destiny:
to surrender its ethereal corpse to the audience.
Two «in yr face” Tragedies:
Double Bill
It is only fitting that
ancient tragedy, pioneer of the dramatic exploration of death, defeat, trauma
and loss, should be central to this theatrical meditation on life’s tragic
reckoning. Indeed, the festival offered a welcome surprise: a double bill
featuring two canonical works of ancient Greek drama, Euripides’ Medea
and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, presented on the same day, in the same
space, under the same directorial and scenographic vision, but produced by two
different national theatres: the National Theatre of Sofia and the National
Theatre of Craiova, respectively. Both productions were directed by British
theatre-maker Declan Donnellan of the company Cheek by Jowl.
Volumes have been written
on these “in yr face” tragedies, obviating the need to restate familiar
literary analyses. Instead, I will briefly highlight what I think distinguishes
these stagings from numerous other interpretations, chiefly, the bold decision
to have the audience stand on stage throughout both performances, with a
30-minute intermission, sharing the space with the actors. This staging recalls
Peter Brook’s concept of the “Empty Space,” where minimal semiotic markings
invite renewed interpretative engagement and a reconfiguration of the boundaries
between viewing and acting.
Donnellan, in
collaboration with longtime set designer Nick Ormerod, removed all objects from
the stage except for a central platform, creating a fluid and undetermined
performance space, akin to an ancient agora or, perhaps more provocatively, a
participatory, modern-day reality show. Within this open, ever-shifting
environment, the spectator becomes a witness to the “unholy” dramas of Medea
and Oedipus, not as palace-bound tragedies, but as societal crises unfolding in
real time, in a space shared with the audience.
Participatory Theatre and
the Democratization of Space
Every scene was encircled
by the curious, ever-present spectator-citizen, yearning to listen, drawn
voyeuristically to the sufferings of those in power. The staging allowed the
audience to approach, shift perspectives and choose their own distance from the
action. Similarly, the Chorus roamed freely among the viewers, speaking to
them, touching them, creating a sense of communal immersion and erasing the
traditional barrier between spectator and spectacle.
At times, the performance
space morphed into a courtroom, with the audience occupying the implicit role
of jury, bearing witness to the protagonists’ conflicting claims and the
gradual revelation of truth.
Medea: A Murderer Who
Knows
Medea is widely known
only as a dark, unfathomable figure, devoid of any redeeming qualities, a
perception that has endured through the centuries. This is perhaps expected, as
such an image ensured her survival in the cultural imagination. However, we must
not forget that, prior to Euripides, this mythical figure also possessed
positive traits. She was, for example, a healer, a woman who saved lives.
What is particularly
interesting is that, in recent years, continuous feminist reinterpretations of
Medea, as well as other classical female figures such as Iphigenia,
Clytemnestra, Ariadne, Alcestis, and Penelope, all victims of patriarchal
systems, have begun to shift how these women are read, staged, and understood.
Medea is gradually returning to the contemporary stage as what she was
originally: a woman of a different kind, untamed and courageous. Throughout the
journey back from Colchis to Corinth with the Argonauts, it is she who
repeatedly saves Jason from threats to his life.
This "other"
woman, who out of love agreed to conform to the expectations of her time
regarding marriage and motherhood, is ultimately betrayed and humiliated. This
betrayal drives her to madness, to fury, and to the edge. She refuses to remain
silent or to accept her fate, as Jason and Creon demand. She claims everything
and destroys everything, above all, the institution of motherhood itself.
All of this is rendered
on stage in a clear and accessible way by Donnellan’s direction. We first
encounter Medea standing, embraced in a dance with Jason on a raised platform.
It is the time of first love, but only briefly. The dramaturgical adaptation
propels us directly into the escalation and the conflict. From a tender, loving
creature, Medea is transformed into a body strapped with explosives.
Radina Kardzhilova, the
accomplished actress of the Bulgarian National Theatre, embodied a figure akin
to a human bomb, primed to detonate, a performative force radiating intense
emotional heat, capable of inflicting psychic burns. With this metaphorical
fire, she murders Jason’s lover by gifting her a dress that literally consumes
her body. Her words are fire; her actions, volcanic. Every facet—voice, body,
expression—served the role of a furious contemporary woman: self-assured,
wounded, ferocious in both love and vengeance, and resolute in her refusal to
apologize.
Medea’s killings are
neither impulsive nor instinctual. She articulates her motivations clearly and
unflinchingly as she moves among us. She kills not out of passion, but from a
calculated desire for revenge. Her actions reflect cold logic rather than emotional
turmoil. What act of vengeance could be more extreme than the murder of her own
children?
Medea is a murderer
unlike any other, unforgivable, perhaps, yet, ultimately explicable. Her
abhorrent act is deeply and consciously anti-institutional, even revolutionary.
It shocks with its rawness, both in action and in word. She does not conceal
her egocentrism, her lack of altruism, or her absence of compassion.
Medea:
"I won’t let anyone rejoice that they have plunged my heart into
pain" (l.398–99);
This is a radical
position, one that could, as I have suggested, be reinterpreted as a reaction
to the oppression and exploitation she suffered within a patriarchal social
order that condemned her to a life of subjugation.
The stark, focused
direction gave this enraged heroine space to shine and to shock. Velislav
Pavlov’s Jason was composed, rational, and emotionally detached, a man governed
by self-interest and expedience. Valentin Ganev’s Creon embodied authority,
manipulation and indifference. The Chorus, scattered among the spectators
(Radena Valkanova, Zhoreta Nikolova, Stefania Koleva, Elena Ivanova, Nadya
Keranova, and Ana Papadopulu), offered interjections that bridged the drama on
stage with the collective experience of the audience.
Ormerod’s minimalist set,
anchored by a central platform that ultimately becomes Medea’s tomb and the
launching point of her journey toward the Sun, allowed the citizen-spectator to
assert spatial agency. Through their movements and those of the actors, the
space became dynamic, meaningful and inclusive, a fluid and responsive
environment that liberated spectators from the fixed roles imposed by
conventional theatre seating. One could sit cross-legged, wander, gaze in any
direction, even leave any time, hide, or check their phone, groceries in hand.
Romanian actor Claudiu
Mihail delivered an Oedipus very much akin to ourselves, a citizen who happens
to occupy a position of power, now forced to confront a major crisis: the
pandemic. He seeks causes and consequences, the guilty and the innocent. He
suspects everyone but himself. Who
did it? This question dominates all mystery narratives. Indeed, Oedipus
Rex holds the distinction of being the earliest theatrical narrative
constructed with the architecture of a detective story, a story that warns
against hasty conclusions. Appearances are deceptive. What matters are facts,
not the opinions of citizens or politicians. Sophocles, long before our time,
meditated on the dangers of what we now call “post-truth.”
For this production, Nick
Ormerod cleared the stage of constraining props, save for a small platform
occasionally used by the actors and a hospital bed placed in the theatre’s
waiting area, where the audience, upon arrival, encounters the first victims of
the pandemic in an ICU (Intensive Care Unit) setting. The pandemic drama then
permeates the supposed safe space of the wandering spectators, who now find
themselves not so safe after all. Like it or not, they are implicated.
Proximity transfers them into the heart of the pandemic drama, which becomes
their drama as well. In this bare performative space, they are exposed, just as
they were during the pandemic, exposed to the possibility of their own death.
Dressed in the costume of
a contemporary politician, Oedipus orates, sweats, strives to persuade us,
moves among us, his electorate, assuming the role of guide and leader. Mihail’s
performance was exceptional. He initially invests Oedipus with the forceful
arrogance that stems from absolute certainty and the illusion of a definitive
solution, only to fall, spectacularly and catastrophically, when his tragic
ignorance is revealed; this is the moment he finds out that Jocasta, his wife,
is also his mother and his children are also his brother and sister.
Ramona Drăgulescu as
Jocasta follows her own, equally willful path of blindness until the end, when
she can no longer bear the light of truth and commits suicide, at the very
moment Oedipus, both literally and symbolically, blinds himself. His eyes,
which led him not to truth but to illusion, are rendered useless. Freed from
the post-truths of his false conclusions, he reappears on stage naked,
bloodied, humiliated and tragic, and for the first time, authentic.
I reiterate that the
director’s greatest achievement in both productions lay in his disarming
simplicity, his ability to ground two complex tragic enigmas without
diminishing their scale or reducing their intricacy. He revealed within them
the ordinary human being, even when occupying a position of authority.
Simplicity enabled the raw inner worlds of both perpetrators and victims to
emerge with startling clarity, confronting the unresolved mysteries of life; no
ornamentation, no furniture, no props were needed, only the scorching,
seductive and deceptive language, and its enactment, performed by two capable
national theatres.
Having previously seen
the production in Thessaloniki, I was concerned about how it would resonate
with an international audience, given its many local references, names, places,
and historical events that might be unfamiliar. Yet judging from the extended
applause, the message not only came across but did so with impact. The
reception could be interpreted as recognition of the complex, labyrinthine
history of the Balkans, marked by striking similarities and contradictions,
both overt and subterranean, histories and mythologies that at times unite and
at others divide the peoples of the region. Such a web of lived experiences, at once
sorrowful and hopeful, is common to Balkan people overall.
The Balkans comprises a
region with more national borders than any other area in Europe, perhaps in the
world, delineating a geographically postmodern space with its mosaic of
national identities. In fact, the word Balkanization is used globally to
denote fragmentation. The performance mirrored this meaning quite effectively,
depicting a mosaic of wounds, traumas, memories, narratives, bodies,
identities, fragments and nationalities, in other words, a postmodern human
geography.
Note: Originally
published in Theatre Times in two parts, 1 August, 2025
