A chamber play about three characters and a parrot with a Balkan flavor and a mostly Bulgarian cast has had its American premiere this week. The third dramatic text of Mayia Pramatarova "Don’t take the bridge" has eight premiere performances between January 29 and February 3 in the small hall of “Stage on Fourth Street" in the very prestigious New York Theatre Workshop.

Mayia Pramatarova is a playwright, screenwriter and director. For many years she worked at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre and Sfumato Threatre Workshop in Sofia, then lived for a while in Moscow and six years ago love takes her to the U.S. Over the past two years which she spent in New York, she has been feeling really at home. New York is a different city in the U.S., especially for someone who is involved with theater in the broadest sense. A city which gives you a lot of energy, but which also takes a lot of energy from you. A city that provokes your imagination in every moment, Mayia says. And despite the successes that her texts have on stage, she admits that she has not stopped writing "about" the theater and continues to define herself primarily as a theater critic. Mayia Pramatarova told RB more:

© Photo: personal archive

Eugenia Radilova and Sergey Nagorny in "Don’t take the bridge"

“Don’t take the bridge” is a play in which things happen in the unfolding of an ordinary love story between a girl from Europe, the Balkans, and a boy that has never in his life left Manhattan. And on this island connected to the world only via bridges and tunnels, they strive for each other and their divergent worldviews clash at one point. What is paradoxical about this story is that the girl that is coming from so far away knows very well the rules of surviving in such an alien place for her. She is determined much more than the boy to succeed. Thus the pragmatic and idealistic attitudes to life are opposed and I am interested to explore how true love is trying to cope with such a situation. The action is set in an apartment in New York where the girl lives with her aunt. Via baking home-made cookies and their nostalgic aroma the aunt is trying to keep the past alive, and to seduce the boy to remain in the present moment that he seems to be missing. At the encounter of these three different persons the action unfolds in an experimental and theatrical way.

Like her two previous plays "Kill that woman!" and "The Revolver", "Do not take the bridge" is written in Bulgarian, because, as she says, it is the language in which she can express herself in the most accurate and authentic manner, although she’s fluent in Russian and English. “In this sense it is a Bulgarian text written in the United States”, she explains. The new play is the result of Maya’s collision with the Big Apple. The cast is composed mostly of Bulgarians – it is directed by Stavri Karamfilov featuring Hristina Hristova, Jo Jo Hristova, Albena Kervanbashieva, Vanina Kondova, Sergey Nagorny, Tony Naumovski, Eugenia Radilova. The music is by Georgi Arnaudov and the English translation is made by Assya Nick.

Logically, the question arises whether the American premiere of the play "Don’t Take the Bridge" is a mere coincidence or the result of a better understanding and enhanced interest in Bulgarian theater overseas today? 

I tried to gather information on what the Bulgarian participation was in the past year and a half in New York alone, Mayia Pramatarova says. And although one cannot draw final conclusions, I think very important and promising trends can be seen. One of these is Ivan Dimitrov’s success here with his play “The Eyes of Others” which had premiere performances in the New Ohio Theater in New York in September 2012. Dimitrov received the opportunity to present his work after he was distinguished at the international literary festival HotInk at the Lark and later spotted by director Samuel Bageln. He is already a well-known playwright in New York. Recently, there was a reading of the texts of Zahari Karabashliev, also Ida Daniel participated as a theatre director at the Underground Zero festival. This makes me believe that this is not accidental but the expected result of hard work and talent combined.

English Rossitsa Petcova