site.btaAnother Round of Applause for Actors and Iguana

Another Round of Applause for Actors and Iguana

April 20 (Rositsa Ilieva of BTA) - The first theatre performance that was streamed on-line just after Bulgaria declared a national emergency over the novel coronavirus, was Uncle Vanya of Vazrazhdane Theatre, a small Sofia theatre which shares one building with the Sofia City Library and seats no more than 100 audience. Many more theatres followed suit, including the National Theatre, and renowned Bulgarian actor-director Marius Kurkinski, widely seen as a phenomenon in Bulgarian theatre, provided 72-hour free on-line access to his one-man show Black Bird.

ACT ONE

The setting is Vuzrazhdane Theatre, mid-March 2020, the days leading up to the national coronavirus emergency, when the theatreТs director Robert Yanakiev suggests that the Uncle Vanya performance be streamed online. The suggestion receives the immediate support of the cast. The initial idea is that the performance be recorded on video by phone and streamed online but thanks to the general enthusiasm and the involvement of some tech-savvy cast members, the premiere is streamed in top visual quality and attracts over 4,000 viewers.

It was some viewers - not the cast - who suggested in their comments after the show that Vuzrazhdane should include an option for ticket purchase to support the theatre financially.

The next online show, 'Allo 'Allo!, was again made available for free viewing but an option was added to purchase "a ticket" of 1, 10 or 50 lev. There were over 5,000 viewers. The actors are still amazed by how many people chose to buy tickets.

After this second online show, a nation-wide ban was issued for gathering of more than two people at one place, so that the actors found themselves stuck at home but they did not stop working. They rehearse a play which the audience are looking forward to seeing, in person rather than online, in the second half of June: Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana. It will be one very tangible product of art at a time of social isolation.

Our own play about theatre at a time of lockdown starts with a friendly chat with Zlatna Kostova, who did the translation of The Night of the Iguana for Vuzrazhdane. Coincidentally, she is also BTA's International Relations officer, as well as one of this country's best known and most prolific theatre and cinema translators and a journalist. Kostova admits she likes her day-to-day life under lockdown even better than before and says it has made her more productive and efficient.

ZLATNA KOSTOVA: It is in my nature to see the positive things. I am now better at prioritizing my tasks, I don't waste time travelling to and from work and I have time to "attend" the Vuzrazhdane rehearsals.

Theatres have never done online rehearsals before. Vuzrazhdane was the first to do that. It is a big step forward but there are also challenges when you work from home, including kids talking to you, being noisy and distracting you in every way. It takes much bigger concentration.

The rehearsing period normally takes a month or more, depending on the director. Normally, Zlatna would attend the first text-reading and then the stepping on stage.

Now, she can be with the actors in The Night of the Iguana and with director Vessela Vassileva every day.

Zlatna prepares as she would for a normal work day: showers, dresses up and makes up. She says she has had this attitude since she was a schoolgirl and admired her teacher when she showed up in class dressed up and made up: it was a way to show respect for herself and the rest.

ZLATNA KOSTOVA: These rehearsals are something of an escape. From what? From panic. I have had cancer and I am in a high-risk group, and I have fears [over the coronavirus outbreak]. But the truth is I don't think of myself as being in a high-risk group. I am the kind of person who tends to be jolly and quickly forgets. It is my family and friends who remind me that I should be extra careful and keep me from not going to the market to have a chat with the florist.

Other than that, I know that I will always have things to do at home and I will never be bored.

(She says she watches CNN and BBC, is obsessed with Metropolitan Opera and has a long Excel table of free theatre screenings with dates, hours and links for shows until June. For inspiration before rehearsal, she watches a documentary from the programme of the Master of Art festival, which also runs this year.)

ACT TWO

Enter GEORGI ZLATAREV. He is one of the Vuzrazhdane stars. To raise the spirit of his friends, viewers and fellow actors during the days of physical distancing, he reads poetry and uploads it on Facebook every day after 8 pm. He says that if one stays an actor for more than a year, it means they really love acting. He argues that while not up to the theatrical art in Russia and Britain, Bulgarian theatre offers very high European standards. The selection is huge. In Sofia one can see all kinds of shows: a play taken out of the mothballs and smacking of the 1950s, modern dance art and all kinds of physical theatre, classical theatre or semi-modern theatre, as well as real crap. On that he says he has eaten terrible pasta but it did not make him give up pasta!

GEORGI ZLATAREV: It would have been good for actors to not be among the worst-paid people in this country. But, after all, we have state-owned theatres while Italy has none and France has one or two, I believe. Ours is a municipal theatre and our budget depends on the tickets we sell but we have a base salary that is guaranteed and we have some level of security, when we work.

Zlatarev is an avid cyclist and is known to have cycled from Sofia to Plovdiv and Haskovo for performances in the local theatres, leaving at 5 am to be there on time for the evening performance. Also, he has a degree in photography and is keenly interested in hi-tech and all kinds of gadgets. He strongly recommends Zwift for virtual running and cycling during quarantine.

GEORGI ZLATAREV: I would not say I have changed my daily routine much. I guess it is an advantage of being a not-very-social kind of person. I would not say this quarantine feels immensely different than my normal life. We have Internet, books, Netflix, TV that floods the space with all kinds of films. We also have all world art close at hand. There is a lot to keep us busy. If we come to think of why we are afraid to remain alone with ourselves, it will be the best thing that could happen to us.

He has a fear of heights but says the fears these days are of a different nature.

GEORGI ZLATAREV: Fear itself is the scariest thing now. They say that domestic violence is on the rise, not only in Bulgaria but in other countries as well. I believe that this violence comes out of fear, out of feeling weak and wanting to make oneself look stronger. I believe that one of the biggest achievements of mankind in the past century, other than going to the Moon and taking snapshots of Mars, is psychoanalysis and turning to ourselves because a lot of people have a problem with the self, they don't like it. This shows in their attitude to Bulgaria and they always complain of how things are here. The truth is that there are problems in all countries. It is true that all these bans [during the coronavirus emergency] are hard to swallow but on the other hand it is funny how people complain about the restrictions. If you take me, I have a fear of injections but if I have to get a shot, I don't bitch against the doctor. And I don't fight the dentist when I have to have a tooth pulled out.

ACT THREE

Zlatarev hosts the group for an online rehearsal. On the agreed day and time he sends a link to everybody who is on standby with their handset/tablet/computer.

ZLATAREV (Speaking as the boxes on his monitor light up one after the other when the participants join in, to the benefit of the only participant who is not a cast member: the author of this story.)

We are having an online script-reading. We take a break every 40 minutes because of the application limitations.

Messenger limits the number of chat participants to eight and sometimes there are 9, 10 or 11 of us. Jitsi Meet is also a good option but it is ideal for one speaker and many listeners. We have an average of nine people who read, then stop, discuss the characters and what they want and what they don't, and we found that Zoom works best for us despite the breaks every 40 minutes.

("Enter" the actors. All are at home but seem to have merged with their characters already.)

DIRECTOR VESSELA VASSILEVA (Joining with her video off.) Great. It is Act Three today. (For the next four hours she patiently hears out all kinds of comments and jokes about the only online viewer of the show: the author of this story, cutting in every time she needs to remobilize the group). This is no show, this is an online rehearsal with a voyeur. Let's be ourselves.

GEORGI ZLATAREV (Sitting in an armchair with blue headphones on, blue shirt and being professional, just like his Night of the Iguana character, Jake Latta, only Latta is not as nice.) The idea is not to show off ourselves. Theatre is not meant to exist only because we actors need it. Theatre and art in general are there to bring good to people: I believe this is what we should focus on.

MARIANA ZHIKICH (With a neat hairdo, asking serious questions, reclining on a seat in a minimalist setting but with the others' jokes, even Miss Fellowes, her character in the play, cracks up to address another member of the cast.) Zhana, when we return to the theatre, you will tell us what the Chinese man is doing in your kitchen.

(The word ending in -19 is never mentioned during the rehearsal. Instead, they joke about the Chinese man in the kitchen from the play.)

ZHANA RASHEVA puts on a lightweight red coat, then takes it off to remain in a thin-strapped dress, then puts the coat back on and plays a colourful Maxine, as SVEZHEN MLADENOV moves from the first floor of his home to the attic as the rehearsal progresses - just like his character Shannon who restlessly moves about a hotel terrace in Mexico. The real reason he moves to the attic is to escape the noise of the children scuffling in the next room, the door bell and a phone ringing, the dog barking, the cat seeking attention, then the Internet signal going bad. DONKA AVRAMOVA (sat against a blue wall with two framed children's paintings on it, fidgeting with a pencil stub. She pauses to see what the kids are up to in the other room. She plays the artist Hannah in the play). I don't judge people, I draw them.

HRISTO STANCHEV joins without video to say his only line in the play, which is loaded with compassion.

ZLATNA KOSTOVA (Joins with the sound off. Smiling as always and with reading glasses on, she answers my question what would be the first thing she would do when the lockdown ends): The most important thing is to return to our normal life without any fear and feeling of insecurity. Then I will buy something from an Italian bistro and flowers from the market, and go visit a friend who has a new home.

ZHANA RASHEVA: I want us all to go to the theatre!

VESSELA VASSILEVA: I will go and have my hair done.

DONKA AVRAMOVA: I will take a walk, we have a beautiful park nearby.

GEORGI ZLATAREV: I will stay at home and take a rest. I don't feel like going out.

MARIANA ZHIKICH: Do you sense how people are beginning to like it [the lockdown]? Some liked it from the very beginning and others later, they all developed a Stockholm syndrome.

DONKA AVRAMOVA: My daughter, Emma, 12, told me the other day, "Spring is almost over and I only watched it go by through the window."

Everybody laughs. The play continues. The Chinese chef and the iguana have an invisible presence until the last act ends, when one of the characters does a small act of compassion. We are looking forward to seeing what it is in summer when theatres reopen. RI/LN