consultant: Boyan Manchev
sound: Lubomir Brashnenkov
costumes: Neli Miteva
photography and graphic design: Ivan Donchev
with: Iva Sveshtarova, Elena Dimitrova, Petar Genkov, Lubomir Brashnenkov, Georgi Sharov and Cats Under Cars band.
Premiere during the „Antistatic” festival, April 2010, „The Red House”, Sofia
S is exploration of the gesture production and of the technologies of violence in this process. And this is done in extreme and very expressive way of working with the actors – with the body, the space, the emotion, the rhythm. The painful and exalted “peeling off” of the clothes, similar to the to the vital effort of taking off the pullover by the character of one of Cortazar’s short stories, is a good example of drawing the attention towards the living into the gesture. The actor’s work is achievement, beyond the known here alternative attempts, which, with all their striving for radicalism, remain in the logic of the aesthetized and instrumentalized actor’s body. Iva Sveshtarova, Elena Dimitrova, Petar Genkov take the risk to search expression without the help of any known “method” and are put in situation of intense self-reflection. The double regime of work in the exploration – in the same time of exalted experience and its estrangement in the technology of becoming of the gesture – is searched through the mood and the figure of infantilism.
Violeta Detcheva, Kultura newspaper
Hectic rhythm, stretched to the breaking point muscles, sore throats, three bottles of whipped cream and gallons of sweat was the final balance from the "S" premiere. And three great performers – Iva Sveshtarova, turning from nice ginger cat into enraged tiger, Elena Dimitrova with vocal abilities like those of Courtney Love and Petar Genkov, who has earned additional admiration for enduring the tight white tights an hour.
Zdravko Grigorov, www.pozorcompany.com
S seriously experiments with the ability of the constructed as actor’s body on stage to go beyond its cultural presumption, twice protected by the theater situation, and to go into detailed and self-concentrated exploration of its physical endurance and plastic expressivity, driven completely beyond the disciplinating aesthetic intention. The performance of Iva Sveshtarova, Elena Dimitrova and Petar Genkov is impressive with their organic presence, optimally stripped of deliberateness, like left on its self-feeding physical impulse. Very intriguing attempt to disarm the actor’s representation, by depriving it of all its supporting points.
Miroslava Maryianova, Lik magazine
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S was created with the support of Sofia Municipality and Biveda Association.