The initiative is occasioned by the 170th anniversary of the birth of the Patriarch of Bulgarian literature
Ivan Vazov National Theatre launches a campaign for celebrating the 170th anniversary of the birth of Ivan Vazov, whose name the theatre is bearing, inviting young and old from across the country to recall the remarkable writings of the Patriarch of Bulgarian literature.
From this day onwards until the end of the year (31 December 2019), everyone regardless of his or her age is encouraged to record and send a short video, where they are reading an excerpt from any Vazov’s work of their own choice. The campaign as part of the celebrations project is held under the motto ‘Rereading Vazov’.
Your videos should have a total running time of maximum 4 minutes in length and be emailed to the theatre at ivanvazov170@nationaltheatre.bg. A jury consisting of members of the theatre staff shall select the best entries to be published on the theatre’s website, Facebook page and by the e-media partners to the project.
‘We titled our programme of 2020 Vazov’s celebrations The Vastness of Vazov, for we would like to remind all Bulgarians and ourselves alike that the oeuvre of our national writer, of our national poet is vast indeed: Bulgaria’s spiritual history and geography. It cannot be reduced to the main— appealing and inspiring—thrust of several poems and lyrics that we have learned by heart in our early childhood, long before we learned to read; to those on the school syllabus for the national curriculum: Under the Yoke and Unloved and Unwanted, The Defenders of Shipka and A Bulgarian Woman serving as important signposts guiding us along the way to our national self-knowledge, for such are The Great Rila Wilderness, Uncles, Towards the Abyss and New Country, My Dearest Homeland and My Path, aren’t they? Isn’t the pantheistic Vazov’s love that recreated Bulgaria’s nature in Songs of a Wanderer and glorified the mountains of our homeland awe-inspiring? Or the fiery passions in his histories? Or his personal pantheon of emotions with its door on the jar in his declining years, in the anthology Scenting the Lilac? Ivan Vazov’s word is built in our red and white blood cells, regardless of whether or not we know or want it, keeping our internal ramrod straight, giving us hope and the courage that we are loved, that we have been born with the blessing of our national writer. And how should we repay him? By reading and rereading his works’, Mirela Ivanova, a theatre’s dramaturgist, commented on the competition. The celebrations will last throughout the season, culminating in the staging of a dramatisation of an emblematic but somewhat underestimated Vazov’s novel, New Country, on which theatre’s deamaturgists Mirela Ivanova and Yuri Datchev are now working. The premiere is slated to be given on 9 July, Ivan Vazov’s birthday, at the open-air Theatre in Front of the Theatre.