Sanja Domazet, “Danas”, Belgrade, 19.12.2003

CLOSER TO ESSENCE
Theatre: Drama theatre Plovdiv, Željko Hubač: “Closer to Earth”
director: Petar Kaukov
The oldest Bulgarian theatre company, Drama theatre Plovdiv, recently toured to the main stage of the National theatre in Belgrade with a play by our playwright Željko Hubač “Closer to Earth” (Two Stories of Rain). This play which plot takes place in Belgrade but could happen anywhere on the Balkans, is compound of two stories between which stands a time difference of a whole century. The first story happens after the Serb-Bulgarian War in 1885 and the second one vivisects the situation in Belgrade by the time of Bosnian conflict. In fact, Hubač has written a drama composed of two thematic, temporal, emotional and spiritual areas which interweaving gives the play a continuous dramatic suspense, playfulness and a sort of subversive tragic rhythm. The story of the rain which happens after the Serb-Bulgarian war, is a tender story about a soldier, who came back from the war without an arm and with eternally maimed ability to love, and a young woman who, in spite of all her desires for completeness in life and realization of love, brings with herself the dark dictate of the past as well. The living past always shall drag her away from the present which is the only time when human wishes could be realised indeed. This story contains the suspense of collective unconsciousness in our region in which, as a constituent element of existence is forever encrypted the war, which inevitability helps its continuous reiteration. On the hard baked earth expecting the rain in vain, Mladen and Smiljana, with their love, killed by the lack of hope, and with the wish for all things that are never to come, are antipodes to the events in the second story of rain which brings us the bitter events in Belgrade with the speed of a film. Dina, Slava, Pavle, Dimitrije, Duce and Kupe trade with goods, alcohol, love and souls. It is natural that the outcome of these most modern trades to be tragic because it couldn’t be otherwise. We’ve got two worlds on the stage: the revived past and the horrible present which both kill the future. In front of us there is a black curtain dropped before and behind which, with a “Tarantino’s”, ironical and painful speed, love and death replace one another with such an acceleration that they often intertwine, touch and mess; but this is a result of the deepest Hubač's submergence in everything that is Balkanically dramatic. Petar Kaukov, a young Bulgarian director, has produced on stage “Closer to Earth” emphasizing the whole power of dramatic action and underlining the universality of the theme which Hubač passes in this drama. In the wonderful, inspired and committed ensemble he has had excellent collaborators. Elena Kabasakalova granted us a sensitive, tragic ‘Dina’ who is redeemed from death only by her unharmed ability to love despite everything; while Vania Shtereva’s ‘Slava’ is full of energy, quick tragic young woman who reached the revenge of one of the most popular fallacies of youth – the belief that “everything is allowed”. Ivana Papazova and Marian Bozukov were powerful and tragic as ‘Smiljana’ and ‘Mladen’ whose destiny in the past explains all the tragedy of the present day. Georgi Vachev as ‘Pavle’, Aleksei Kozhuharov as ‘Dimitrije’, Troian Gogov as ‘Duce’ and Ivailo Hristov as ‘Kupe’ presented on stage lifelike and clearly outlined characters of young people cut down with no exception by the war which doesn’t spare anyone: neither good, nor bad; neither these who have taken part in, nor those who have only looked on it. “Closer to Earth” in the production of Drama Theatre Plovdiv was a performance which gave us the possibility of coming cathartically to ourselves and, through that, to be at least a step closer to the others, as well as to the knowledge which often means freedom.

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Željko Jovanović, “BLIC”, Belgrade, 16.12.2003

BULGARIAN WARNING
Željko Hubač, "Closer to Earth", directed by Petar Kaukov,
production of Drama theatre Plovdiv

The Drama theatre Plovdiv with its interpretation of the play of our playwright Željko Hubač seriously doubted some “undoubted facts” in our theatrical life. With this performance the young Bulgarian director, not only, before everything else, casts a new light on a single play, but on our contemporary dramaturgy in general and especially, on its treatment in our theatre. In fact, cleansing this play from the everyday political coat and placard level, which was basic in its interpretations in our country, Kaukov has enabled it, under its transparent surface to be more visible of its deeper subject. Apropos, at a first sight one can see the parable of times, without which the drama of Hubač couldn’t be of a great importance, neither its stage interpretation representing the contents only would be anything better than a documentary. But in Kaukov’s interpretation, the Hubač’s story about returnees from the battlefields, miserable women and their unsuccessful men as well as the other characters from the dark period we painfully recall, is compared to another story from an earlier war from which, some people are also returning. The real events, we are talking about, are softened up by the director in an “escape” into archetypal and ritual which is crowned with the last scene imbued with real emotions and genuine feelings.
Second doubt which this performance imposes onto our theatre concerns the widespread belief according to which actors are the undoubted value of our theatre. For this is not quite true proves the ensemble of Drama theatre Plovdiv by which we could learn a lot; especially in the way they manage with a committed subject, but in the same time how that content is transformed to a level of universal values.
If we add to this the skilful arrangements of our musical motives and their combination with a modern sound, we come to the conclusion that the touring Bulgarian performance is very important, not only because it shows the complexity of our forgotten interrelationships, but for the way it is compared to the experience and tradition of the others.

 

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Dragana Bošković, POLITIKA EKSPRES, Belgrade, 22.12.2003.

EKSPRES critic for the tour of Bulgarians in the National theatre
CLOSEST TO MISERY
Željko Hubač, “Closer to Earth”, Drama theatre Plovdiv, Bulgaria, translated by Blagoje Nikolić, directed by Petar Kaukov

“Serbia, Bulgaria, Balkans… Isn’t it one and the same?...” – asks the young director Petar Kaukov to himself, writing in the program of performance “Closer to Earth”. He maintains that the real border crosses our history.
The text of Željko Hubač is a fierce analysis of the last war, with a memory of the time passed, before that first war, the one in the last century. Everything begins the same, everything ends the same; evil multiplies and refines itself, the misery of its virus just adds up to the illness of fratricide…
Petar Kaukov has not only shown Serbia – the crushed one, but has moved the Hubač's story to Bulgaria, to those who haven't gone through our pains during last ten years of the last century, yet who haven't been passed by them. Anyway, the misery is essentially different. This misery, depicted through the returnee from the Bosnian hell, infected with AIDS, Kaukov shows just as the presence of a common moral fall. This is at least where it is obvious – to prostitutes and criminals. The difference between good and evil fades into the fog of time, as well as into the uncertainty and incidence of natural elements invoked at the end.
In the main role of Hubač's play Georgi Vachev shows his worth as ‘Pavle’; he is an actor of extraordinary sensibility for an urban man. With expressive means but still introvert, Vachev was extraordinary as ‘Pavle’, creating the feeling that he had played in Serbian language. Troian Gogov as ‘Duce’ has been his alter-ego. A violator, a criminal incapable to distinguish moral from immoral, he conducted this dominant dark line of action without any fault. Kaukov, for his part, has organised the acting area (set and costume designer – Elitsa Georgieva) in a way that the story which runs in several space-time strata is shown perspicuously.
The tour from Plovdiv confirms the conviction that such contacts, which sophisticate experience, are necessary. For it would be good this performance to be seen by those who don’t belong neither to one nor to the other nation, who are “bare” revealed in this story.

Penka Kalinkova, LUDUS, Belgrade

HOW MUCH ARE WE DIFFERENT IN SIMILARITIES
The opening of the Balkan Neighbourliness
In the oldest Bulgarian theatre – Drama Theatre Plovdiv, there is a Serbian play on stage! There wasn't such an event for more than a half-century, since the time when Nušić's Dr. and Mrs. Minister, and Balkan aristocrats by Ljubinka Bobić went with applauses. During the 122-year history of this theatre, at the second largest Bulgarian city, in different periods there was a commitment to the plays of Gorky, Brecht or Tennessee Williams, but constantly to Shakespeare and Moliere, especially when in Plovdiv worked one of the greatest Bulgarian stage directors Liuben Groys (1969-79).
For the last some sixty years in Plovdiv have been staged a lot of Bulgarian and Soviet plays; Bulgarian, Russian and Western European classics; old and new American titles; Dario Fo, and so on. But not works from the Balkan neighbouring. The Serbian dramaturgy has even a sort of priority compared to Romanian, Turkish, and Greek. An exception is Philoctetes by Ljubiša Georgijevski (who is well-connected in last years with the theatre of Plovdiv, and well-known Macedonian director, actually the Ambassador of Macedonia in Bulgaria) – a successful production of the Drama Theatre.
In a broader layout in Bulgaria the situation is a bit different because the plays of Dušan Kovačević Assembly-point, The Professional (two concurrent productions), Larry Thompson – tragedy of a youth are played in Sofia by some theatrical elites, but in the theatre of Blagoevgrad on stage is Karoline Neuber by Nebojša Romčević. The director is a Plovdivian – Prof. Krikor Azaryan. One of the famous Bulgarian directors in collaboration with the talented set-designer Mladen Mladenov staged January by Jordan Radichkov then and there in 1981 at the Yugoslavian Drama Theatre. During the last decade Azaryan builds a bridge through Bitola, where one by one worked the directors Krasimir Spasov, Aleksandar Morfov, Galin Stoev, Rosica Obreškova.

The sister-nation of Algeria and neighbouring Yugoslavia
Again Azaryan shows a lasting interest to the dramaturgy and Balkan theatre projects as far as he was the first to stage The Powder Keg by Dejan Dukovski and The Belgrade Trilogy by Biljana Srbljanović. After the premiere the latter said: «There are Swedish plays on stage in Belgrade, but not Bulgarian ones, and this has nothing to do with the quality of texts». Something similar was stated by Željko Hubač in Plovdiv.
Obviously Bulgarian dramaturgy is in the same situation in Serbia as the Serbian one in Bulgaria. Srbljanović mentioned The Colonel Bird by Hristo Bojčev. I have seen this performance of the Yugoslavian Drama Theatre.
Why it happened by that time (according to the witty remark of Prof. Andrei Pantev) that they talked of «the sister-nation of Algeria and neighbouring Yugoslavia», is not the subject of this article, though reasons are known – historical, political, of any kind. But, this retrospective is necessary to enable me to draw a sketch of what is nowadays remarkable in Plovdiv and Belgrade.
Prof. Azaryan was a supervisor of the project Balkans read Radichkov. Four young directors from Serbia, Macedonia, Turkey and Greece staged last summer different parts of the play Lazarus by Jordan Radichkov. Andraš Urban was the participant from Serbia, but in this co-production took part the manager of Plovdiv's theatre Emil Bonev as well, which is important. Bonev intended to make a Balkan theatrical network even before, but after his participation in this project and the tour of Plovdiv's theatre in Belgrade and some important meetings and conversations there the intentions came into real shape.
The young Bulgarian director Petar Kaukov produced on stage in Plovdiv the drama Closer to Earth by Željko Hubač. In this play there are two stories with a temporal difference of 110 years interweaved. First of them happens after the Serb-Bulgarian war in 1885, but the second is a contemporary one and it is showing the situation in Belgrade by the time of Bosnian conflict. Stories are shown from the Serbian side but Bulgarians are related to them not only because they are involved (Mladen comes back from war as an invalid, crippled by a Bulgarian bullet, while Kupe is a Bulgarian who takes part in the jiggery-pokery of petrol by the time of the embargo over Yugoslavia), but because everything which goes in the play could happen in Bulgaria or anywhere on the Balkans as well.
"We are so similar in our differences that we repulse each other”, says Kaukov. “We are so different in our similarities that it is impossible to dislike each other. We eat and drink together, we curse in the most horrible way, and after we drink again”, he talks on. «In two words: we love each other. Where from goes the border? In any case it is not by Kalotina, Vrashka chuka*, or Bregovo*.» In his opinion the border begins and ends by a sole and solitary, unwept grave. The same one in which we're going to lie down. This is a pretty emotional expression for a Bulgarian and for a young man (we are more sober than Serbs), but it puts a lump in our throats as a real truth.
Even if the play was built only on the contemporary story, it would be strong and authentic, based on known pieces of reality from the mid-nineties, it would remind us some other subjects we knew from newest Serbian films. Because our intellectual communication with Serbian cinema and prose (Andrić, Ćosić, etc.) has a richer tradition and continuity no matter to whom or to what we owe it. But Closer to Earth goes deeper right because of the parallel between this and the story of the 19th century; the repetition of events on the Balkans. This poetic stratum, the second one, is important because of its Biblical continuity. A woman and a man meet on the dried up grass of home. The man is with an empty sleeve, stuck in the pocket of his uniform. But the trauma is much deeper. A real meeting between them is not going to happen. It is because the war takes away from human beings what is human – the ability to love.

Ritual killings
We, Bulgarians and Serbs, apart from both world insanities (wars) when we fought each other, are the only Europeans who were in war twice more (1885 and 1913) for a period shorter than fifty years. What happened by the dissolution of Yugoslavia was even worse. It was not neighbours, but relatives to fight against one another. The outcome is horrible. After 1885, borders of Serbia of the time were kept thanks to World powers. After Bosnian conflict, there broke out the one in Kosovo, so territory of ex-Yugoslavia shrinks like chagrin.  The scars on the hearts of the participants are much more terrible than the ones on their bodies even worse than the decrease of borders.
At the magnificent and exciting end of the Plovdiv production of Hubač's drama, most harmed by wars characters, Mladen and Pavle both, come to the proscenium and nearly ritually shoot in one another. Brother against brother. That’s what happens when unlearned lessons stay in the long-lasting and obviously eternal Balkan drama/karma. As if in an ancient tragedy, this or that way all males taking part in the play end dead. War is still a male game. Sole survivors are those innocent victims – the women. By the sounds of motives for rain there come on stage three women from two different time strata as well – Dina, Slava and Smiljana. In their hopeless chanting on the sounds of an infinitely sorrowful melody, futile to invoke the rain, is contained the whole sorrow and suffering of our survival at this corner of Europe.
Kaukov is strongly influenced by the dramatic text of his coeval Hubač, and it radiates from the performance. On the stage of Plovdiv by means of stage techniques, the director achieves a spectacular meeting of epochs (set-designer is Elitsa Georgieva). There is a black curtain dropped before us, which backs up the horizon and focuses our attention to interrelationships between characters. We are watching a film which we know and which we do not know. Time and time again frame sequences from two basic sites alternate:  dried up meadow where Mladen and Smiljana meet each other, and where their love happens and doesn’t happen; and some urban interiors where contemporary characters love each other, lie to each other,  spy to each other, kill each other… Two traditional songs sound: one for love and one for rain. The actors, the youngest in the company, are sincere and charming. For sure this performance will have a great number of friends; in Plovdiv and in Belgrade, in Bulgaria and in Serbia.

Paragraph:
At the premiere in Plovdiv, among other important guests (the Ambassador and the Cultural Attaché of Serbia and Montenegro in Sofia, representatives of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria, some famous theatrical critics, etc.) was the director Ljubiša Georgijevski as well (now the Ambassador of FYROM in Sofia), who after the performance didn’t spare compliments stating that it would be nice to see the creative tandem Kaukov-Hubač in a Macedonian theatre.
On the road through Bulgaria, Jovan Ćirilov visited “Ivan Vazov” National Theatre in Sofia and Drama Theatre Plovdiv, where he saw three performances of the young Bulgarian star-director Marius Kurkinski. Being in Plovdiv, Ćirilov attended the last rehearsal of Closer to Earth and after that he stated in an interview for “Trud” (Bulgarian newspaper with the best circulation) that “the director’s work of Petar Kaukov is splendid” but the actors in the performance were “at a highest level”.
“Kaukov has enriched the text with set-design and other visual elements”, says Ćirilov. If he would ask me for some reproves on the performance, I would find it hard to find some. I am delighted with the interest to Serbian plays in Bulgaria, because I think that Serbian dramaturgy is one of the best ones in Europe.”