Two more premieres on the Chamber Stage of Ivan Vazov National Theatre will take place till the end of the year. On the 29th and 30th of November, the first Bulgarian production of “Someone is Going to Come” by the Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse, directed by Katya Petrova, will premiere. And on the 13th of December the world premiere of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” by Dario Bevanda, directed by the Artistic Director of Theatre Oberhausen Kathrin Mädler will happen.
“Someone is Going to Come” is one of the most popular plays by Jon Fosse (Nobel Laureate for Literature, 2023). A man and a woman try to hide from the outside world in a remote house among the fjords. Yet even there they find no peace - the deep-seated fear that "someone is going to come" breeds great tension. Sexual attraction and jealousy mix with a sense of а threatening reality beyond escape.
Fosse, the most recognisable voice of contemporary Scandinavian theatre today, will be presented for the first time to the Sofia audience. The creative team of the production looks into the experimental nature of the play and discovers the commonality in the "specificity of the unknown."
The production "Someone is Going to Come" is part of the "Theatre+" Programme of Ivan Vazov National Theatre.
How does a person and a community survive in a world full of brutality and isolation? Is it necessary for the past to be confronted in order to reconsider the present and future? And how do the marks left by painful abruptions of the texture of daily life, which major events like wars cause, last throughout the generations? – are among the questions, which “Darkness on the Edge of Town” touches upon.
On a strange winter evening, as the snow tirelessly falls and locks down the residents of Sarajevo underneath its whiteness, in a small apartment on the edge of the city, the cleaning lady Fikreta and her younger helper Betina struggle against the filth, disorder, and dust of time.
The experienced Fikreta, who grew up during the war, cleans diligently and is completely dedicated to getting the job done. Betina, on the other hand, is more interested to sink and soar among the pieces of life that is lived or was lived in this neglected home. She comes across audio diaries, kept by the former tenant during the siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s, recorded on cassettes with disco hits. While he tells more and more about his daily life in that capsuled world, history and present begin to overlap, and Fikreta and Betina are also confronted by their own ghosts from the past.
Dario Bevanda (b. 1985 in Saraevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) is one of the rising stars of the contemporary theater scene in his country and the region. In April 2023, his text was awarded by an international jury at the NEW STAGES SOUTH EAST FESTIVAL at the Theater Oberhausen. Its premiere at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre in Sofia is the world premiere of the text.
The production is created in partnership with Goethe-Institute Bulgarien and the Theater Oberhausen.
Cover image: (c) Nikolay Dimitrov
