Tom Stoppard in Bulgaria Cover Image
  • Price 4.50 €

Том Стопард в България
Tom Stoppard in Bulgaria

Author(s): Kamelia Nikolova
Subject(s): History, Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Recent History (1900 till today)
Published by: Институт за изследване на изкуствата, Българска академия на науките

Summary/Abstract: The study deals with the earliest productions in Bulgaria of Tom Stoppard’s post-modern drama in the 1990s and at the turn of the twenty-first century. These were just a few, based on plays by the British playwright: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Arcadia, but each of them generated key transitions and turns in Bulgarian theatre practice in the wake of the political upheaval of the late 1980s. Looking at the theatre map of Bulgaria of the last three decades, it becomes apparent that two have been the productions based on Tom Stoppard’s plays that have marked the transition of Bulgarian theatre from the socalled ‘late/belated modernism’ to the early conceptual postmodernism (the performance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, believed to mark the beginning of British post-modern drama, by the National Theatre, London, in Sofia in 1996) and from conceptual postmodernism to performative aesthetics (Arcadia by director Galin Stoev, 2000/2001, Ivan Vazov National Theatre, Sofia). Both events were followed by intensive changes in the staging practices and acting of many young and some of the innovatively minded established actors and groups. These changes gave key impetus to some of Bulgarian directors and performers to embrace the latest trends in contemporary dramatic arts at the turn of the century. And if the virtuosic performance of London-based National Theatre in the mid-1990s brilliantly reasserted the nascent at the time stage practice of some of Bulgarian companies to relish the play with quotes and references, revitalising it, Galin Stoev ‘s Arcadia set the aesthetics of performative theatre, of a performance as a real-time authentic experience of both actors and spectators. To explore this inspiring dialogue between Tom Stoppard and contemporary Bulgarian theatre, the study presents this emblematic writer of post-modern dramas to then proceed with the major Bulgarian productions of his plays. In conclusion, Tom Stoppard’s role in the development of Bulgarian post-modern theatre is reviewed.

  • Issue Year: 2019
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 12-22
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: English, Bulgarian