WE CELEBRATE 97 YEARS SINCE THE BIRTH OF IVAN RADOEV
On 30 March at 19:00, the Pleven theatre will mark the 97th anniversary of the birth of the great Bulgarian poet and playwright Ivan Radoev with the poetic performance „A Blank Sheet“, created on an idea by the poet’s grandson - Kaloyan Radoev - and director Yordan Slaveykov. In the one-hour theatrical-poetic event, based on poems by Ivan Radoev, Ivan Radoev - son, the Pleven theatre actor Antony Penev, and the actors Dimitar Nikolov, Yordan Varbanov and Plamen Petkov will take part. A special guest of the event is the poet’s wife, Vesela Radoeva.
„A Blank Sheet“ is not a recital, not a traditional performance, nor a typical performance piece, its creators share, but an opportunity for an encounter with the iconic lyric and social poetry of Ivan Radoev. The free movement and communication of the actors with the audience turn the performance into a kind of poetic dialogue. The actors and creators of „A Blank Sheet“ are guided by the idea that the place of Ivan Radoev’s poetry is among the people, just as it is – without masks, without make-up, bare and powerful.
The dialogue between the specially selected poems of the poet builds an invisible structure that reflects and explores the life and transformations of the man, the father, the poet and the human being Ivan Radoev, his attitude to love, to society and to the critics who had banned him.
The title of the poetic performance is taken from Ivan Radoev’s collection of the same name, „A Blank Sheet“, from 1975, published after his 15-year forced poetic silence. „Today not much is said about him, says Kaloyan Radoev, and this is very reminiscent of those years. And our wish is for his name to be heard more and more often.“
„I avoid crying, because on the whole I am a bit of a sceptic. I resemble the Bulgarian people a little in this respect. I do not want to give up, I do not want to cry“, said Ivan Radoev of himself, the man who forever changed Bulgarian poetry and theatre. Born in 1927 in the town of Pordim, he graduated from the First Boys’ High School in Pleven and took part in the construction of Hainboaz during the brigade movement. Ivan Radoev was the first author of a love cycle published after 1944, for which he was declared decadent and bourgeois; having become a favourite of the people and an eternal thorn in the side of the critics, the recipient of the extraordinary award for lifetime achievement conferred by the International Academy of Arts in Paris, Ivan Radoev remains in our memory as one of the most noble, gentle, good-natured and at the same time critical poets and playwrights of Bulgaria.
„His meek, quiet and slightly sing-song voice, his soft, I would even say tender manner of communication, actually concealed the white-hot, merciless blade of his free thought - exceptionally vivid, rich in paradoxes, unpredictable and piercing“, director Mladen Kiselov writes of him.
And let us not forget the words of Ivan Radoev:
„Free is the person who can say to himself: I am afraid of nothing, I can gain nothing, I can lose nothing, but I know that this is me.“
Thirty years ago, on 10 July, at the age of 67, the eminent poet and playwright Ivan Radoev passed away. Since 1997 the Pleven theatre has borne his name, and every two years a National Competition for Playwriting named after Ivan Radoev is held.