The last premiere for the season 2023/2024 on the Main Stage of Ivan Vazov National Theatre took place on 12 and 13 May. The renowned Bulgarian director Javor Gardev staged "The Merchant of Venice" by William Shakespeare, focusing the attention on the linguistic disparities that emerge in our interconnected world.
“In my rendition of "The Merchant of Venice" by William Shakespeare, performed in Bulgaria with a translation by Alexander Shurbanov, I explore the hidden factors that contribute to conflicts supposedly rooted in cultural, ethnic, religious, and gender differences.
I also give special attention to the linguistic disparities that emerge in our interconnected world. In the initial iteration of the project, tentatively titled "Sephardic", certain characters express themselves in their native languages during particular scenes. This serves the purpose of concealing their conversations from others, remaining true to their roots, and challenging the prevailing language of their host country.
Thus, speaking in places in Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), in Arabic and in Aragonese, the characters of the play often willingly become incomprehensible to the other characters, but also to the audience, to whom the meaning of what is spoken must reach through subtitles to compensate for the linguistically produced effect of alienation, which aims to confront us with an encounter with the “others” in their personal life-world and their own small linguistic environments amid global Babylon.” - shares the director, Javor Gardev.
Javor Gardev (born 1972, Sofia) holds a MPhil degree in Philosophy from Sofia University, and MFA degree in Theatre Directing from the National Academy of Theatre and Film Arts. He currently works as resident stage director at The National Theatre of Bulgaria in Sofia. One of the foremost directors of his native Bulgaria, he has staged over fifty theatrical performances, in his home country and abroad, which were presented in Sofia, Berlin, Paris, Lille, Bern, Gdansk, Moscow, St.Petersburg, Lisbon, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Skopje, Rotterdam, and Utrecht, to name a few.
Among the plays he has staged are William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear, Edward Albee’s The Play about The Baby and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (endorsed by Mr. Albee), Heiner Müller’s Quartet, Jean Genet’s The Maids, Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade, Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman and A Behanding in Spokane, Tracy Letts’s Killer Joe, Ethan Coen’s Almost an Evening.
His feature film debut Zift won nineteen domestic and international awards and special mentions. Javor Gardev won “Silver St. George” for Best Director in the Main Competition on the 30th Moscow IFF. “Zift” was part of the selections of fifty-four different International Film Festivals including Toronto IFF, 2008 (Official Selection, Discovery).
