Based on motifs from the play by Alexander Pushkin and Vladimir Nabokov
Teodora Lilyan
Roman Dolzhansky
Ksenia Peretrukhina
Sergei Jordanov
Kalin Nikolov
Ilya Pashnin
Stoyan Bakardzhiev, Lyudmil Dimitrov, and Valentina Radinska
This little play by Alexander Pushkin holds many mysteries – the author neither finished it, nor gave it a title, nor published it. Scholars argue to this day about both the genre and the composition of “Mermaid”. Many writers and poets have written an ending for this one-act drama of ill-fated love, betrayal, and revenge. It was in the twentieth century that Vladimir Nabokov was unable to avoid his temptation and wrote the play’s most famous ending. It is as if Pushkin himself had invited readers and their descendants, each in their own way, to unravel “Mermaid”, to fantasize freely, to search for new meanings, to connect it to modern times. The young director Teodora Lilyan has not seen an old fairy tale in Pushkin’s play, but a very contemporary story, performed by contemporary people. The characters of the play seem to ask themselves and us about what is happiness. At different times people answer this question differently – love, family, children, freedom, success. And at all times, they pay with their lives for such a choice.
Pushkin, of course, doesn’t know the “right” answer either. He doubts, grieves, and reflects with the audience, and even – all sorts of unexpected events happen in the theatre – he may appear among the characters of the play…
Roman Dolzhansky
Reneta Ikonomova
Nikolai Dimitrov – NAD
Yanina Petrova
Stefan N. Shterev
Stefan Zdraveski
Premiere: 22nd and 23rd of April 2023
