“We were unveiling the State Theatre of Satire with Mayakovski’s the Bathhouse but we had no ending. On first night, we were all very worried – after all we were all young actors then. But I was very curious too. In fact I was making out to be more worried than I really was because I believed in stage director Surchadjiev - we are very much alike. I really like working with people who get great ideas at the last moment. He told us not to worry and start the performance, that during the intermission he would tell us what the ending was. And indeed – he brought us all together during the intermission: I’ve come up with the ending, don’t worry. The time machine sifts out the goodies from the baddies in the play. There is one kind of life for the goodies, then they get pulled away in the wings and into the future, but we the negative characters were to drop into a dark abyss and crawl. So, we asked him: Surcho, where are we going to fall? And he said: wherever you see fit. So, we saw fit to fall into the orchestra pit. We fell, all in a bundle and crawled around in that hellhole in darkness with mysterious lights here and there. That was something he had had planned, he knew very well where we would fall but hadn’t told us so as not to alarm us. At one point I realized I was trampling on someone and I heard a voice: “Get off me, you’re crushing me!” It was Georgi Partsalev. That was a first night I shall never forget. It was very much in the style of all of the work we did, thanks to that irresistible, that singular director – Stefan Surchadjiev.”

In 1957, the beginnings were laid of the Theatre of Satire with the staging of Bathhouse, recollections of which you just heard from renowned actress Stoyanka Moutafova. In those years, there was no way to avoid the order of the day:

“Our first newborn cry is no wail, but a clear and unequivocal shout – we are a propaganda theatre house! Though so young, we shall do our best, from the very first step we take to stand firmly on our feet, to grab the spear of laughter and stand in formation to fight for communism!” – writes the theatre’s founder Stefan Surchadjiev. Here is an interview with him just before the theatre’s opening:

Excuse me, but besides Bathhouse, are you working on any other play?

We are working on three plays. The second one will be a compilation of satire works by Bulgarian authors with a special theatrical frame – with a compere, with music and songs.

What other works do you plan on staging in future?

The next play we shall stage will be “Satire through the ages” – starting with Juvenal, Aristophanes, then through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and reaching down to our day. It will all be as a costume drama, with the set, the music from the given age, with each of the works of satire having been brought up to date with elements that correspond to modern times.”

Despite all this, the theatre encountered problems with censorship and right before a first night, some plays had to be edited. In the 1960’s stage director Metody Andonov took over the administration of the theatre; the plays he staged by Gogol, Chekov and Vazov were a veritable theatrical phenomenon. Metody Andonov was the first to stage Yordan Radichkov’s Commotion and made Stanislav Stratiev’s Roman Bath an event never to be forgotten.

Grisha Ostrovski and Mladen Kisselov continued the tradition of bringing forth blockbusters on the Satire Theatre stage that ran for years – Stratiev’s Velvet Jacket and Bus Ride, Radichkov’s Lazaritsa, plays loved by the audiences but also by the actors themselves. Yordan Radichkov himself goes back to the staging of his Commotion: “I remember some of the actors reaching boiling point; for a long time afterwards they couldn’t bring the temperature down. And I have heard Grigor Vachkov and Georgi Partsalev saying, once the curtain was down, that they wanted to come out and tell the audience they wanted to start the play that had just ended all over again…”

“We probably make mistakes. But that is not something that worries me because we shall learn from our mistakes. Oftentimes when we talk, we talk in jest. But make no mistake – when we think, we are serious,” said Stefan Surchadjiev in his address at the unveiling of the Theatre of Satire. These words were to become emblematic for the theatre in the years to come. The theatre’s stage directors and actors have been talking in jest, but have been serious in their thoughts and have always been loved by audiences.

English version: Milena Daynova