Immured

Description:

The builder Manol immures the love of his life – Neda.
What are the limits of a creator's selfishness?
What is he ready to do in order to eternalize its creation?
Which is the border that one should never cross? Does this border exist at all?
Man is mortal, while the creation is immortal. Is it a sin to take the first in the sake of the second?
God had created man and had given him a soul.
Manol had created a bridge and had immured in it a soul.
The soul of his beloved one. For the bridge to stay.
Forever!

Duration: 60 min. |  Premiere: 28/09/2012

Also participate in the play:

• Dramaturgical basis: Maria Stankova
• Consultant - ethnologist: Ph.D. Veselka Toncheva
• Photographer: Ivan Donchev and Gergana Stamatova

Awards

• IKAR Award 2013 for a puppet show;
• IKAR 2013 award to Hristo Namliev for author's music;
• GRAND PRIX from the VIII International Puppet Theater Festival for Adults "Pierrot" in Stara Zagora, where Marieta Golomehova (for stage design), Hristo Namliev (for music) and Hristo Takov (for a male role - Workman Manol) also received prizes, and a prize for the young theater criticism.

Veselka Kuncheva and team Immure a dream in “Immured”

I do not know whether this is puppet theatre. Assuming that puppetry is the unconditional control over your body and all your senses, then it is a puppet theater. Assuming that there are objects moved by invisible forces, mysterious events, almost magical, then it is absolutely connected with puppet theater. Putting the joke aside, but Veselka Kuncheva had chosen for her performance the stage of puppet theatre Plovdiv – one of the best in Bulgaria. The project “Immured” has a long history, starting when the text of Mrs. Mariya Stankova, “The Dead Head Spoke to Me”, and the deep ethnology research or Mrs. Veselka Toncheva of the legend of the immuration – the dead with frightening beauty – to lay in the foundations of a construction the most beautiful girl around. To choose between love and creation?! Creation is love by itself and that is why the dilemma is so horrifying. And exactly this is the tense theme in this performance. We have Manol, who is the best bridge builder and his beloved, the lovely Neda, and the desire of Manol to see his creation completed and whole. The director, Mrs. Kuncheva, is extremely sensitive while dealing with the legend and had managed to create one brilliant, coherent and logically constructed in all its parts and connections, performance, which has an amazing impact on any kind of audience. The performance acts like a musical composition with development of themes, and sub-themes, repetitions, canons, whispers, melody and rhythm… which become sensible and visible due to the, once again amazing, work of Mrs. Marietta Golomehova, who took care of the visual side of the show. The performance is presented as if on a film tape, narrowing the specter to focus the attention on the movement of the legs, in the meeting of the stone and the water. A very unusual move that itself offers another optics and makes and puts the emphasis on the rhythm of the show. It is so magical that together with the other counterpoint – the usage of real stones and real water - make the performance extremely life and vibrating and the air become tangible. And here it begins – stone upon a stone, and rhythm, hands in rhythm, legs in rhythm, romantic legs, flying legs, even talking legs – they are all here! This is a story about the falling in love and love itself, about building and building-in, about the creative will that in order to dominate is ready to cross the moral dilemmas and stinging to continue its existence. And all this presented mainly with the means of human motion. Music and choreography in the performance act on equal basis as all the other components and the traditional Bulgarian dance, “the horo” is the symbol of each part – the dance as a gathering, the dance as a victory, the dance as goodbye, man dancing, women dancing, legs dancing and making their way through life. We have the water as part of life, we have the water as love, as dream, we have in this dream the witch and its prophecy “That each bridge require a sacrifice” in order to stay… we have the amazing final scene in which comes the demolition – the real, the actual falling stones over the head of Manol. The bridge will probably stay but the sacrifice made is horrifying – a human being had been laid in its foundations. This is performance without many words, we only hear the thoughts, the intentions, the dream and there is so much poetry, so dramatic tension, that the only possible end could be the actual demolition – through cataclysm earthquake. And nature resents what had happened. Such kind of performance do exist – though not very often, but always when there is real imagination, real desire and real thoughts. When you make it with the perfect people and on the perfect place, when there is talent and dedication.

Penka Kalinkova, Theatrical critic, 10-10-2012