May, 4th
Croatian House of Culture in Sušak
Theatre Laboratory Sfumato, Sofia, Bulgaria
Margarita Mladenova – Ivan Dobčev: THE BLACK FLEES
Scenario and directing: Ivan Dobchev and Margarita Mladenova
Actors: Vladimir Penev, Chavdar Monov, Jana Racheva, Mira Gogovska, Diana Dobreva, Josif Chamli, Daniel Rachev, Radko Savov
Stage designers: Ivan Dobchev and Daniela Liahova
Costumes: Daniela Liahova
Music and sound: Assen Avramov
Video: Lyubomir Mladenov, Boris Misirkov
Literally translation of texts from Greek: Nickolay Gotchev
Poetical translation of texts from Greek: Kiril Merdjansky
Lights: Georgi Zgurov
This new production is realized in the frame of tke European theatre cooperation project “THEOREM”. The performance is _ presented in 2000 at: Hebbel Theater, Berlin, The Avignon Festival, Mittel-Fest, Cividale, Italy San Marino Stage Festival, MES- Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina/ 2000 Golden Laurel Award for Best Show and the Audience Award/, “Migrations _ Festival of Piccoto Teatro di Milano, Italy.
The project itself is inspired by the mythical imagery connected with an ancient nomadic tribe named Karakachani: sheep- breeders and sheperds, dwelling in high mountainous regions, who, similarly to the migratory birds, have been Crossing the territories of the Balkan Peninsula from the North to the South and vice versa, in accordance with the eariy cydes, with the succession of winter and summer.
With no Promised Land in a world divided by borders, customs and ideologemas, with no written culture within a hostile environment of sedentary civilized peoples, the Karakachans, their caravans and herds are inevitably doomed to sink in the dust of oblivion. Their legends however, their rituals and beliefs have been preserved over centuries and generations due to a very closed pattern of living: by word of mouth and from hand to hand, they have passed the ability to make cheese, to shear the black fleece and to weave the fabrics for the gorgeous black traditional uniform of the Karakachani bride.
The etymology of the name, given to this tribe by the others – sedentary peoples – also goes back to a peculiar mythical imagery: KARA – BLACK, and KACHAK- A FLEER, A ROVER.
The close distance to the Karackatchans inevitably inspires imaginative journeys. We are attracted by the enigma of these dark fleers, urged by a incomprehensible – from the point of view of sedentary peoples – logic, as though coming from nowhere and going nowhere, by their naive’s magic ways of relation with the hereafter, by the submission of their leaving ” “here-now” to the “there-always”. These are the main paradigms of “The Black Flees”.
Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev