Between Dark Aesthetics and Repetition:
Reflections on the Theatre of the Bulgarian Director Veselka Kuncheva and Her Two Newest Productions

In the course of the last decade, the tandem of Veselka Kuncheva, director, and Marieta Golomehova, set designer, managed to develop their special creative process and make a name as theatre-makers with a distinctive style characterized by deep symbolism, visual richness, and a combination of puppets, live actors, multimedia elements and music. Other features of their works are a dark aesthetics and experimental approach, where text seems to lose its primary importance and give way to the visual. In 2019 Kuncheva said in an interview “...I realized at some point that we start serving the text, and there is much more to theatre than just text. That is why my way of working is almost upside down - I accept the text only as one of the instruments of theatre. For me, the main thing in theatre is what we call life." (Kultura newspaper: Issue 9 (2982), November 2021)

The tandem’s performances have invariably been receiving predominantly rave reviews. Almost every year they have been awarded the main theatre awards Ikar and Askeer, thus cementing their status as leading figures of  the Bulgarian theatre.

However, behind the adulation and accolades there are issues that rarely get raised publicly. Recently, the tandem’s work has begun to follow one and the same, familiar pattern: repetitive visual elements with an emphasis on darkness and smoke. In almost every performance Kuncheva develops a similar idea, placing in the center a human being who is afraid, or corrupted by society, or possessed by their own demons.

Photo © Alexander Bogdan Thompson

I have been observing the tandem’s work for ten years now and, during the first three of them I was not only impressed but truly enchanted by the visuality of their theatre and the richness of stage means of expression. In the summer of 2016, I had the opportunity to attend the rehearsals of the Queen of Spades by Pushkin, at the State Puppet Theatre of Plovdiv, and I kept a diary about the work process. I remember the rapture of the rehearsal atmosphere and Kuncheva's mastery of creating a team, her ability to challenge the actors every day with new tasks for creative experiments. A year later, though, I remember the premiere of Demon Life, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Demons at the State Puppet Theatre of Stara Zagora, as a moment of sobering down of my enthusiasm. The performance looked like a sequel to Queen of Spades: with the same approach, similar mise-en-scène and subject matter, albeit in a new visual form. With each subsequent performance of Kuncheva, the repetitive elements became more noticeable to me. Many would call it a style, but where does a style and creative language end, and uniformity and predictability begin?

The newest work of Kuncheva and Golomehova, The Little Prince at the Youth Theatre “Nikolai Binev,” represents a slight departure from their otherwise typical dark aesthetics. Although the production is aimed at a children's audience, smoke and repetitive mechanical movements again take center stage, creating a feeling of depression. The plot of Saint-Exupéry's story is nearly entirely followed, with its key moments, like the Little Prince’s encounters with the Fox, the Rose and his travels through the wondrous planets, but they seem to remain on the surface, deprived of the depth and philosophical message of the original work. Repetitive elements, such as mass dance scenes, which have no clear connection to the plot or characters but are intended to summarize the previous scenes, deepen a sense of disjointedness and a lack of original directorial ideas for presenting Saint-Exupéry’s work. The theme of the individual and society – a Kuncheva favorite – creeps in here as well, but it does not bring anything new or different from her previous performances. Loud music, dancing and smoke once again dominate the stage space, making the transitions between scenes mechanical and devoid of emotional fluidity.

The cast of The Little Prince is undoubtedly trying with utmost dedication to accomplish the tasks set by the director. Especially Kuncho Kanev, in the role of the Pilot, builds up a brilliant and complete character who goes deftly from the very striving for life and the steadfastness, through childish naivety, to the touching love for the world around him. The appearance of the actress Anna-Valeria Gostanyan is very impressive too; she  plays the part of the Serpent, twisting around a descending spiral. It is a truly acrobatic moment where the airiness and beauty of the movement stand out against the repetitive mass dance scenes.

Photo © Alexander Bogdan Thompson

It should be noted that Kuncheva and Polina Hristova, the authors of the dramatization, have managed to introduce some humor through several comic scenes that illustrate the absurdity of the world we live in. For example, the scene with the stargazers who count stars on an exaggeratedly large abacus in order to own, sell and earn money for more stars; or the geographer, who strongly resembles a bureaucrat from a government office refusing assistance because of a missing document. Although these moments capture the meaninglessness of the modern world, they also highlight the main problem in Kuncheva's work: lack of a clearly identified central idea that would unify the scenes and result in an overall integrity of the production.

The visually appealing sets created by Marieta Golomehova manage to take the viewer briefly into the magical world of the story, transporting them through the stars and universes and introducing them to the whimsical characters. Golomehova incorporates spirals and rounded elements throughout the set design: from the descending spirals around which the planets are located, to a massive spiral platform in the center of the stage around which all the journeys of the Little Prince take place. Ultimately, though, despite the visually impressiveness of the production, it remains empty in terms of content.

There is something of this combination in the previous production of the tandem: The Portrait of Dorian Gray at the Racho Stoyanov Theatre in Gabrovo. There, the fragmentary nature of the structure is taken to an extreme: the scenes often end upbruptly, as if literally cut off .  This is sometimes rather confusing and makes it difficult to follow the overall storyline. The production follows the main thread of the novel, where Dorian Gray, obsessed with his beauty, sells his soul to preserve his youth while his portrait ages. Although the atmosphere of mysticism and decadence around the character are conveyed, the emphasis again falls mainly on the visual side and mass scenes. The idea of ​​a tableau-vivant in which Basil (Dimo Dimov) models the actors' bodies in front of a translucent fabric, creating works of art, is impressive. A visually strong moment is also the coming to life of the portrait that finally swallows Dorian.

Unfortunately, though, Blagovest Mitsev, in the role of Dorian Gray, fails to achieve anything memorable, playing as if one note almost through the entire performance. This contrasts strongly with Tsveti Peniashki, who demonstrates impressive vocal and acting skills in the part of Sir Henry Wotton. Penyashki manages to create a multi-layered character, while Mitsev seems to fail to capture the complexity of his character, and his achievements remain only on the level of plasticity.

In The Portrait of Dorian Gray there again are dance scenes and mass scenes, in which the actors repeat movements and lines that have no essential meaning to the plot, except to re-emphasize the theme of aimlessness of existence. As in other recent productions of the tandem there is a combination of costumes inspired by a concrete era and rather neutral materials, such as elastics, nets, nylon and fabric. So the production has impressive plastic scenes, yet features the familiar flaws: excessive focus on the visual side at the expense of content.

In 2016 the theatre critic Veneta Doycheva wrote in her review of Kuncheva’s Escapes performance, "If there is something that could be desired, it is towards the purely dramatic side of the performance. Individual etudes quickly exhaust their internal charge and do not trespass into a more generalized level of meaning. Many of the scenes get stuck in repetition and fail to develop the literal saturation of gesture or movement in a new plane. The metaphorical key is laid bare, and instead of poetry, the image acquires only technical dimensions." (HOMO LUDENS 19/2016)

No doubt, the productions of Kuncheva and Golomehova represent a well-balanced hybridity between elements of dramatic theatre, puppetry, musical theatre and acrobatics. However, a major problem remains the very telling of a story. Attempts at creating a poetical atmosphere often turn into a maelstrom of repetitions which bring about stasis and cyclicity in the dialogue. What Doycheva underlined in 2016 has, alas, worsened now, and the repetition unfolds on two levels: first, in the repetition of scenes within one and the same production and, second, in their transfer from one production to another. An example of this can be seen in the repetitive lines and mechanical movements of the nobles in Dorian Gray, the nobles in The Queen of Spades, the controlled figures in The Last Man (2019) and the collective images of society in Momo (2014), Don Quixote (2022) and The Little Prince.

Photo © Alexander Bogdan Thompson

Actually, the repeated mise-en-scène, themes and means of expression in Kuncheva's work began after her production I, Sisyphus (2013), which is still running. In it, the main artistic element is the multiplication of the actor's face by means of puppets made from a plaster cast of his face. It is nearly in the same way that the collective image of the Gray people in Momo is built up. In Fear (2014), another production of Kuncheva (co-authored with Ina Bozhidarova), the same technique is used to present the fears of the main character. In The Queen of Spades, the repetition comes in the form of a dress made of multiple baby dolls, and in The Last Man, based on  Orwell's 1984 (2019), there are busts again with plaster casts of the face of one of the actors in order to stress  the lack of individuality.

While the multiplication of faces gradually receded in the tandem's collaborative work, the "dancing woman," or an ensemble of "dancing women." remains a constant element in their performances. This motif appears in various forms: from the ballerina in Fear, through the Countess and Lisa in The Queen of Spades, Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation (2017), the Dulcineas in Don Quixote (2022), Sybil in The Portrait of Dorian Gray (2024) to Roses in The Little Prince (2024).

Photo © Alexander Bogdan Thompson

In light of these observations, a question arises: does Kuncheva's focus on visual elements, at the expense of dramaturgy and analysis, contribute to the repetitiveness in her performances? In her interview at the Kultura newspaper, she reportss that she bases her approach on the personal experiences, skills, and perspectives of the actors. From my observations during the rehearsal process of Queen of Spades, I can add that she provides actors with the freedom and time to express themselves through a series of tasks related to the materials to be used in the performance (such as wire mesh, rubber bands, foam, etc.) and the themes and subthemes of the literary works. However, the freedom offered in the laboratory process seems not to have a significant impact on the final result, as it is often suppressed by already established visual images. This leads to a disconnection between content and form, resulting in performances that resemble scattered thoughts, devoid of a unifying overarching idea.

The distinctive artistic approach of Kuncheva’s tandem with Golomehova is undoubtedly an important part of the contemporary Bulgarian theatre, but perhaps the time has come for a change: for an escape from the familiar dark narrative, for researching new themes, for challenging themselves. After all, the biggest challenge for an established artist is not to stay in the comfort zone, but to find new ways to inspire and be inspired. The human beings’ biggest battle is with themselves, as Kuncheva herself emphasizes in almost every work of hers.