Spectacles
Medea, my mother-NETA
by Ivan Dobcev, Stefan Ivanov
Medea, my mother-NETA
by Ivan Dobcev, Stefan Ivanov
Premiere: 30.08.2015
Duration: 1 h 30 min / Pause: No
The performance will be presented in the NETA International Theatre Festival by The Theatre Laboratory Sfumato.
The show will have subtitles in romanian and english
Time it was for us in Sfumato to look outside, to hear what is in the wind that blows from the street and to try to answer, to put against his passionate chorus the arguments of intellect, the highest measure of human.
This performance aims to confront both topos of contemporary European soul - that of the ghetto, the emigrant colony, which swells in recent decades and now represents a threatening majority and the intellectual, elitist layer of the society, which still relies on utopias.
We are trying to put in a European context the Bulgarian living, the Bulgarian reflex to the "cursed questions" of existence. Not only in our country there are masses of people who are economically forced to survive by selling their bodies, blood, sperm, and womb. Wealthy West has not refrained from using poor East as a donor and a surrogate mother. The practice that turns motherhood in a business is booming in our latitudes and gives thousands of examples. From this documentary statistics our show has withdrawn several authentic monologues of boys and girls involved in the inhuman game of their economically and ethically bankrupt parents – a game of abandonment, tossing and selling children. The myth of Medea is introduced in this discourse through the neoromantic return of born in Bulgaria Elias Canetti to the spontaneous profanation of the same myth, due to poverty and misery of the people from Bulgarian provinces today. "Medea - my mother" is a performance about the dangers of the loss of sacred value of motherhood, dehumanization of the post human and reduction of living to survival.
| Isaura: | Marghita Goșeva | The Elder Sister: | Elena Dimitrova |
| The Sister-in-Law: | Nevena Kaludova | Bojidar: | Dimităr Nikolov |
| Teodor: | Hristo Ushev | Leonsio: | Ivaylo Draghiev |
| Johnito: | Antonio Dimitrievschi | Gurgulito: | Stanislav Gancev |
| Musician: | Marek Dyakov |
"The performance begins with The Choir of the Blood sellers. In our corner of the world this is a practice that has long turned the blood donation into a business. It is practiced primarily by swarthy youths; with the development of the genetics they pick up also the sperm sale. By irony of fate, all these donors are children abandoned by their mothers. Their authentic
monologues for the vicissitudes of growing up without a mother end up with the one and the same refrain - "Fuck the fucking mother!""
"Our protagonist undergoes a blood transfusion as a result of the crash, which he has gone through upon landing on this area. In order to articulate his doubts we let by his bed a character (borrowed from Dostoevsky) - his Double. So his entire background of all civilization accumulations, intellectual qualifications, and life of a student provided for by his rich foster parents will be placed in a situation that requires a radical solution."
"Around the blood sellers several women are circling, who can be recognized as mothers of our protagonist, and who by virtue of the blood will invade his dreams; together with the men they will introduce him in the childhood yet not lived, they will reveal for him the games, the first thrills of the touch between the male and the female, the mystery of conception. Each of these women may be the hypothetical mother of our protagonist and he will try to acknowledge her. These attempts will culminate in authentic monologues by women who will represent the vicissitudes of pregnancy, miscarriage/abortion, killing or selling children. Each one of these stories is traumatic and is the result of economic duress".
Awards
Icarus Award 2013 for Best Performance
Nomination Icarus 2013 for Best Actor in supporting role to Ivaylo Gragiev
Nomination Icarus 2013 for Best Original Music to Assen Avramov
Nomination Askeer 2013 for Best Original Music to Assen Avramov
Festivals 2013:
Varna Summer International Theatre Festival - Varna
Drumev Theatre Fest - Shumen
“The Big Theatre in a Small Town” Festival - Targovishte
“Stage on Crossroad” International Theatre Festival - Plovdiv
On tour 2013: Drama Theatre - Rousse, Drama Theatre - Haskovo, Cultural Centre -Harmanli
"What is common between Elias Canetti, sold babies, abandoned children, the search of the root, the myth of Medea, whale Goliath, Harmanli and Joker from Batman and this thump-thump-thump which pulsates terribly ?!
Several films and even less theatre performances managed to bring me to the malaise of strong mental shock.
"Medea. My mother" - the new premiere of the Theatre Workshop "Sfumato", is just such an example. The relationship between the above elements is this performance.
When Ivan Dobchev and Margarita Mladenova engage in "media" theme for the sold / abandoned children, things get really terrible. We've heard all these stories countless times, but exposed to the end, cried, sung, erupted in front of us, they already affect us very seriously. As human beings. Because it comes to distortion of the human, to the loss of the reasons it is called so still". Kremena Dimitrova, All for Sale
"The Best in the season: Awarded with "Icarus" for best performance "Medea - my mother" is a performance-wound, in which six documentary stories hit us mercilessly and rush to break our tranquility and rational thinking". Svetlana Pancheva, Duma Newspaper
"The directing tandem Margarita Mladenova - Ivan Dobchev sweep all obstacles, puzzles and shocks with their new show "Medea - my mother"". Pressa Newspaper
