Gerasim Dichliev – a Bulgarian mime in Avignon

There are people born under a lucky star. Young Bulgarian mime Gerasim Dichliev is surely one of them. A good fairy probably was keeping an eye on the cradle of the little boy from Svilengrad (South Bulgaria). How else can we explain the unique chance that later came upon the physics student Dichliev who fell in love with the pantomime theatre from the first performance he saw in Sofia. He later grew up to be the “right hand” of the great mime Marcel Marceau in the school he himself set up in Paris. Of course, Gero, as his friends call him, needed a lot of persistence, boldness and talent to get lucky. In his play “A monologue with a suitcase” Gero recreates with a little bit sad humor the long and difficult course from one end of Europe to the other, from his birthplace Svilengrad to the Bulgarian – Turkish border, to the theatre scenes in France in the west coast of the continent. It was played at the famous theatre festival in Avignon in 2010 and again in 2012. It’s a play that the weighty newspaper “Le Mond” mentioned this year.

We met the French actor of Bulgarian origin quite by chance at the square in front of the Pope’s Palace in Avignon where maybe hundreds of young and bold actors advertise their plays by themselves – some with pamphlets, others with a short sketch. In this multilingual sea of actors, our attention was drawn by a little Bulgarian flag that was stuck on top of a pyramid of suitcases which Gero had steadied on his back. In 2010, Gerasim Dichliev rented a hall for his play in Avignon with the financial assistance of the municipality of his birthplace Svilengrad. The performance gained success and the income let him participate again in the summer of 2012. And the experience in Avignon is unique in terms of the creative atmosphere and opportunities for getting new ideas and self-confidence. Outside of the official program alone, more than 1000 plays are shown there every year. The festival’s catalogue is as huge as a telephone book and it’s a real puzzle for the visitors. They are facing a difficult choice – which one of the interesting and provocative performances to choose and which one to skip.

“It’s interesting to watch how, at 10 in the morning, the cafés are full of people who drink their coffee and read the catalogue – says Gerasim. – Every one of them crosses out the hours chosen for plays. They calculate the distance between two theatre halls while figuring out if they will have time to move between two performances. It’s a great pleasure to observe this and to succeed in entering their program. The Avignon Festival is a huge bouquet of plays and it charges me with a lot of energy. This fund gave me strength to go around the streets and invite the audience to my play. The festival’s principle is simple – if one succeeds to rent a hall, afterwards everything that will bring success to the play is one’s own responsibility – to find an audience and to get them in the hall. A big part of the plays there is unknown to the world at the beginning. That’s why you have to be on the streets in order for people to see you and to believe you. I, specifically, was on the streets for at least 5 hours to tell the people that I am there and to invite them to “the best performance”. This was the call every one of us sent like in the good old times of the street theatre.

Avignon is now an important stage for Gerasim’s career. He describes his play “A monologue with a suitcase” as an “autobiographical fiction” that, with the expressive language of the pantomime, tells us about the vicissitudes on the roads of Europe of a young Bulgarian actor who, 20 years ago, dared to show up at a casting in front of the great magus Marceau. Ups and downs, experiences characteristic for a whole youth generation from Eastern Europe who have seen the Berlin Wall collapse in front of their eyes and the world opening for them. Thousands, maybe millions started on a journey to all parts of the world, carrying a dream in their hearts. Nowadays they live in two very different worlds – the one from where they have started and the one that they have reached. They are torn apart by the impossible desire to be at the two places that have become so dear to them at the same time. The message of the play “A monologue with a suitcase” is the internal duality and peculiar drama of this generation of emigrants. It grabs the heart of the audience and gives a topic for a long reflection after the curtain falls and the applause reward Gero’s talent and dedication. In the guest book some of them wish for the actor to carry them away in his suitcases the next time he goes wandering across Europe.

Gerassim Dishliev - "Monologue with a suitcase" - an autobiographical whim

After graduating from the Theatre Academy in Bulgaria 20 years ago, Gerasim Dichliev left for Paris with the bold dream to learn from the best, to perfect himself with the help of his idol – Marcel Marceau. His mother, a French teacher, somehow found the address of the famous master’s school in Paris and Gero left with a bus for the cherished city, led by his passion for the magic of the big mime. He became one of Marceau’s best students and soon he was his first assistant in the school until it closed down in 2005. He lived in the artistic excitement of the French capital, married a Frenchwoman, had children. Together with the director Constantino Raimondi he has his own theatrical company and already 7 performances behind his back. But part of Gero’s soul and heart stay there, in the distant and precious Svilengrad, where his family and friends are. He is tortured by a particular form of homesickness.

“This is a feeling that rankles me, because I don’t know how my mother, sister, friends feel at the moment somewhere there, in this case at 2750 km south-east. I am tormented by a painful feeling of absence. There are, of course, ways to contact each other – phones, the Internet, skype, which fool me to think that my loved ones are close. I know that at the moment my family is there by the sea or in the mountain, that tomorrow they will go to my favorite mountain place Beglika, the day after tomorrow they will go to mow a meadow, on the third day they will go to grape-gathering, one of my nephews will scrape his knee while playing and I won’t be there to experience all of that with them. The same nostalgia accompanies a lot of people of our generation. People are dispersed all around the world and always have a part of their mind somewhere else, at a favorite place where you can’t return right now, because you want to be there at this exact moment with your family and friends.”

Gerasim Dichliev is a true European who believes that every person has to remember and gather strength from his roots. He believes that the cultural variety is one of the biggest values of Europe. Maybe because of that the small amount of words in “A monologue with a suitcase” is in Bulgarian, the music background is also inspired by beautiful Bulgarian folk music. And all of the dishes on the table, when he invites guests in Paris are Bulgarian, because Gero is an unsurpassed cook.

Which is the brightest memory that the creative life with the great Marceau has left in the consciousness of the Bulgarian mime? It’s hard to choose one from the thousand matchless moments. Gero first thinks of the mime’s hands, his characteristic walk, his gaze. And one more thing…

“His favorite gesture is to show a flying butterfly with his right hand. For me this gesture has a deep meaning, because one day Marceau told me how it originated. When he was a juvenile, around the end of the 1930’s he was watching a movie about World War I. At both sides of the front Frenchmen and Germans were on the watch for each other, in the trench. And just as one of them was about to aim at the enemy, a butterfly landed on the tip of his gun. The soldier involuntarily reached to catch it and at this moment he got shot. When you have heard this story from Marceau himself, his favorite gesture – the flying butterfly – it acquires a greater symbolical meaning of freedom, of everything that you have been aiming at and the inability to reach it, also the foolishness of the war…”

Gerasim Dichliev thinks of going the reverse way from Paris to his birthplace Svilengrad 20 years later in 2013 with his play “A monologue with a suitcase”. This time he will not travel by bus, but with a bicycle. “Because the world and I have become more ecological”, he says. He thinks of making stops every 80 km of his way and have a performance. It will also be an occasion to discuss with the local communities problems such as immigration, ecology, our common European home and “what we carry in our suitcases” when we travel around the world. But there is a whole year until then and we will be able to discuss his project when it gets more “specific dimensions”.

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Gerasim Dichliev – a Bulgarian mime in Avignon

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