Siyka Doneva, director of AUBG Art Club, conducting casting
for Roman Bath.
Photo by Keilin Huang

There will be a theater season at AUBG this semester, although theater professor Nedyalko Delchev is on a sabbatical leave. Four independent performances will be directed by students, with Delchev promising to consult and help fund the projects.

Delchev said he is ready to give advice to the students, if they need help with choosing the play and the casts, developing of the play's budget, or finding the best place for the performances. Delchev added the students in charge of the projects have already worked on similar tasks and have the needed experience.

Since this semester there are no acting classes, the plays will be sponsored by the SG and not by the AUBG theater fund, Delchev said. The directors of the plays will have to apply for the SG money through the AUBG Art Club.

The old library in the Main Building will not be used for performances as it was last year because the English Language Institute (ELI) is scheduled to move there from the Skaptopara 2 residence hall. The students, directing the plays, will have to rent some of the town halls. Senior Siyka Doneva, president of the Art Club, said that the cost for using one of them is about 100 levs per day and this will be the major expense of the productions this semester. Delchev said that he has already talked with Dean of Faculty Steve Sullivan, and they have agreed that in case the SG money is not enough to rent the halls, the plays will be sponsored by the university money, which would have been used for regular theater classes.

Currently three plays in English and one in Russian are in the process of development. Doneva is the director of the play "Roman bath" by the Bulgarian playwright Stanislav Stratiev. The play will be presented in its English version. Another play in English, "Equus" by Peter Shaffer, is directed by senior Donika Valeva and junior Igor Gurkin. "Equus" had outrageous success when it was first performed in London in the 1970s and then in Bulgaria in the early 1980s, Delchev said. "Bouncers" by playwright John Godber will be directed by senior Mihail Mikov.

Gurkin also directs "While she was dying" by Nadezhda Ptushkina. The play will be performed in Russian. "We already have a big Russian-speaking audience here and have one such project in Russian each year," Delchev said. Gurkin said that the performance will probably take place in November and all the actors in the cast will have previous experience. "This time it is going to be a little problematic in terms of the budget. We will have to find new ways to find it," he added.

Right now Delchev is working on his own projects, one of which is the play "Poker" by Bulgarian playwright Emil Bonev. The play will be performed in Blagoevgrad on Oct. 13-15. In addition, a group of AUBG alumni will perform "The Marriage" by Nikolai Gogol in the "Sfumato" theater in Sofia on Sept. 24-26. Delchev said that he hopes the cast will come and perform at AUBG in the Spring. The group of alumni includes: Petya Petrova, Vasil Petrakov, Iliya Petrov, Stanislava Barbova, Tani Tanev, Vera Angelova, Vladislav Kovachev, Ivan Estatiev, and Ivan Ivanov.