Lazaritsa

by Yordan Radichkov

• Director: Boyan Ivanov
• Set Design: Svila Velichkova
• Music: Asen Avramov
• Animation: Boris Valkov
• Video Mapping: Todor Todorov
• Featuring: Milen Dimitrov

Yordan Radichkov’s Lazaritsa takes us into a world that resembles our own, yet is not quite the same. At its center is Lazar — a man who thinks he’s seen it all, but still hasn’t figured out exactly what has happened to him. Everything seems like a game played somewhere between the comic and the tragic, but it is a game whose rules keep changing as it goes, without much concern for which is which.

The situations become tangled like yarn in a cat’s paws — gently absurd, with conversations veering off in unexpected directions and laughter appearing precisely where you least expect it. Beneath the surface, however, something is constantly nagging and refuses to let you rest.

In this performance, even the sounds are born before the audience’s eyes and ears. The sound of footsteps, the animals, the storm — everything happens here and now, as part of the game, as though the world itself were being assembled anew onstage.

Lazaritsa is like a fireside conversation that begins as a joke but gradually makes you listen more closely. And just when you think you’ve understood everything, it turns out you may only be getting started. As is often the case with Radichkov, the more you watch, the less certain you become about what is real and what is simply a funny story. And perhaps that is the most interesting part of all.