The Coin (Awarded play, excerpt)

A young man – The Writer – has passed on and has turned up on the shore of the river Styx, without having anything to pay with to The Ferryman. The Ferryman agrees to let him travel the dreams of those, who call for him, who miss him, so he could convince them to bring him a coin. Wandering between the dreams of The Prostitute (whom he paid with stories, as he had no money) and The Publisher (who is to publish The Writer’s first book) and helping his only friend (The Tramp) to pass on as well, stuck between this world and the one beyond, The Writer is forced to revise his whole life, his attitude towards money, love and his art, so he could meet his Admirer at the end. But is The Writer worthy of admiration at all? And what were his relationships – were they not based entirely on money, or was there anything else?

Carol Rama and the Pleasure of Image

Carol Rama is one of the most provocative artists of the XX and XXI centuries. Although in different periods her work has been associated with some of the significant artistic movements of the XX century, such as surrealism, art brut, arte povera, she does not join any of the leading trends and artistic groups. This makes her work a challenge to the history of contemporary art.

The New Testament in Nikolay Rainov’s Novel "Between Desert and Life"

The text offers a parallel and juxtaposing reading of the canonical evangelical texts and Nikolay Rainov’s novel Between Desert and Life. It is known that in his complicated transformation of the New Testament, the writer implants theosophical ideas in his narration radically changing the meaning and the message. Which is more, his incarnation of God is, in a strange way, evil and misanthropic. The interpretation shows closeness between passages of the novel and the book N. Rainov was translating at that time (1919) – Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Svetlana (Nominated play, excerpt)

Svetlana is a theatre collage of soulscapes of a few women born in Bulgaria, Russia and the USA before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Memories from the past alternate with letters, fantasies, and conflicts. The story of Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter, is in the center of the play. Parallel to it is the story of Ada, born in the 1970s Bulgaria. Mainly in the form of monologues, the two women speak on the topic of money, truth, family, and the imprint of history on every person’s life.

The Dialogue of Stories and Pictures

In Prince and Plague – a Relatively Late Avant-garde Project of 1931 Nikolay Rainov is one of the greatest experimenters of Bulgarian literature not just in terms of style but in terms of genre as well. His late modernist project Prince and Plague, with ‘fearful fairy tales’ and illustrations, is among the most daring ones of the fading Bulgarian avant-garde. Published in two carefully designed books with a thematic series of drawings and pictures, these works have not yet found their adequate interpretation. Announced as children books, they obviously seek for an audience more radical in its thoughts and senses. Art historians have often defined these works as ‘secessionist’ but no doubt they could be placed somewhere betweenthe extreme expressionism and the surrealism.

Clarice’s Secret. On The Foreign Legion (A legião estrangeira, 1964) by Clarice Lispector

The 13 stories of the collection The Foreign Legion (A legião estrangeira, 1964), the first appearance of Clarice Lispector in Bulgarian, are a piece of hypnotic writing that is difficult to compare with any other writer’s language of that time. On the one hand, this prose has a memory of the European modernism with the experimental spirit of the Left Bank of the Seine, with elements of literary cubism and delicate traces of Judaic mysticism… On the other hand, the European refinement and suffistication are literally shaken by the local culture with its smell of jungle and its colorfully hysterical Latin American Catholicism.

About Money and Other Important Things (Nominated play, excerpt)

The characters of the play are students in 1st, 3rd and 5th grade who are friends from school and neighborhood. They are from different socio-economic backgrounds depending on their parents’ work and social status. They share their problems, disappointments, dreams. The culmination of the play is their escape from school and going to the scating rink. On top of this forbidden act they lost a large amount of money that they have to give back (without telling the adults because they will be punished). Thus, the characters experience different trials, revealing their feelings, helping each other, demonstrating friendship, love, determination, as well as envy, bluster, rudeness. Each act of the play develops a separate financial theme, the complex issues are presented in a funny, playful way.

Alcaloids as Part of Russian Festive Culture

The text analyses extensively the role of alcohol in Russian culture in terms of anthropology and literary history – from the traditional folklore, through 17th century texts, diary entries by Nicholas II of Russia about having champagne with the cavalry, drinking in the times of Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachov, in the youth subculture circles and the alcohol in some key literary texts of those periods.

Crowdsourcing in Support of BNT Public Function

The text is driven by the concept of crowdsourcing and seeks its application in support of the public function of the Bulgarian National Television. The author develops concrete suggestions how to implement user-generated content for the benefit of the public media content.

Not a Forest but a Neon Technological Urban Tree (On the Exhibition In Front of Me, 2020)

The author’s exhibition In Front of Me is a visual symbiosis of two themes: two crises intertwined in the human behavior – the ecological one and the social one borne by the pandemic situation that turns into a deeper existential crisis and questioning of the human. The trees represented in large-scale paintings are not a forest but rather some singular entities, bare-stripped crowns strenuously cut into a gloomy sky.