“
OOOO – The Dream of Gogol”,
Sfumato Theatre Laboratory, Sofia. Written and directed by Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev.
Since 1989, when it was created by Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev
Sfumato Theatre Laboratory has been conducting extensive theatrical researches based on different classical authors. Those researches they call usually “programs”: “Chekhov program” (including 3 performances after Chekhov’s plays), Dostoyevski program, Strindberg program (“Jean, Julie and Christine” was invited to Interferences-2012), Program “Exit: Astapovo Station”, based on documents and texts of Lev Tolstoy. From the inside of their Laboratory Mladenova & Dobchev generated a powerful change and renovation of Bulgarian stage during the 90s. I still remember their Chekhov trilogy after “The Seagull”, “Tree Sisters” and “Uncle Vanya”… I still remember “Albena” from their “Iovkov program” (a Bulgarian classical author). During the years Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev have cultivated their own public, have trained a new generation of actors and have influenced young intellectuals from different humanitarian fields (poets, philosophers, musicians, visual artists). Nowadays Sfumato Theatre laboratory, finally based (after years of homelessness) in a nice large building inside a park in the center of Sofia, offers a working space to young creators of all artistic domains.
Their research principle is based on a profound analyze of the author’s writings and biography in order to transcribe trough theatrical terms the inner substance of his specific artistic world, visions and ideology. “
OOOO – The Dream of Gogol” is such kind of project – here
Mladenova and
Dobchev examine the roots of Gogol’s ironical imagination and deformed dark visions. We can feel both sides of
Gogol’s imaginative world from the very beginning, when we are presented the different groups of pedestrians that take a walk on Nevsky Prospect in different parts of the day. On a catwalk we see to appear and disappear different representatives of Russian society. When the dark falls, the silhouettes become supernatural, ghostlike… All those changes are very dynamically and strictly calculated. They shortly describe the place where the characters will act. Immediately after that we meet several Gogol’s characters, from different short stories (including “The diary of a Madman”) who fight heroically for their dreams or run away from them, frightened. It’s a concentrated performance, the catwalk hides secret windows and covers from where appear and disappear scary faces, visions, ghosts, dreams. “OOOO” is a short crying of the Madman, seconds before the ends come. It recapitulates all hopes, disillusions and despair hidden inside Gogol’s pages.
“
The Good Person of Szechwan” by B. Brecht, choreography and actor’s instructor
Andrei Șerban (Bulandra Theatre) offered us a detailed practical analyze of the Brecht theatre concept. Every single theatrical element here was staged conform the indications of Brecht’s “method” (may be this is the reason Andrei Serban announces himself as a simple instructor of the actors). The
Bulandra performance proved in a very dynamical and amusing way (both for the public and for the excellent actors) that Brecht’s theoretical concepts are still viable and able to create in the spectator exactly those moods of insecurity and criticism Brecht was hoping to reach.
Aglika Stefanova-Oltean
