The tickets to the performances of “In the Loneliness of the Cotton Fields” with the world-famous American actor John Malkovich at the stage of the National Theater went on sale today at 12.00. The interest is huge, and in front of the cash registers of our first stage, there were queues of interested people since early in the morning.
In just an hour, the tickets from the cheaper categories were sold out and only those of BGN 350 and BGN 400 remained, according to a check in the system of Eventim.bg.
Since yesterday, after the date and time of the ticket release was officially announced, numerous comments have appeared, filled with indignation as to why the prices for the show in neighboring Greece are lower. At the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, tickets range from 7 to 55 euros, and the reason is that The Onassis Foundation is raising ticket prices to make them more affordable for viewers.
From The National Theatre came out with a definite position, quoted by bTV:
“The inviting party bears all the costs related to the transportation of the sets and the team, the accommodation, the technical support of the specific visitation and the copyrights. The burden of the entire cost of the visitation of the performance was distributed on the basis of the number of seats in the Great Hall, and they are not even so much.”
World famous actors John Malkovich and Ingeborga Dapkunaite will play the performance directed by Timofey Kulyabin on February 16, 17 and 18 on the Big Stage in The National Theatre.
The performances will be in English, and Bulgarian subtitles will be broadcast on special monitors.
“In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields” by Bernard-Marie Coltes is one of the most mysterious works in contemporary theater under the direction of Timofey Kulyabin.
The famous play of Bernard-Marie Coltes “In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields” was written in 1985, four years before the playwright died of AIDS. The French theater researcher Patrice Pavis finds in it points of contact with the philosophical dialogues of Plato and Diderot, and Coltes himself calls it a “philosophical dialogue in the manner of the eighteenth century”.
The action takes place “on the other side of time” – in the dark hours of the night, when a Dealer and a Client meet and become entangled in a dangerous game of buying and selling, in which fear, desire, sexuality, repressed guilt and aggression rule.
The object of the “deal” remains vague and unnamed. Some painful secret is being kept, which can not only be spoken, but humbled by the inner measure of good and evil, of right and wrong. The dialogue resembles a dramatized monologue of successive exposition of philosophical theses; retorts and arguments are exchanged according to the rules of a treatise on logic or law.
Beyond the seeming impenetrability of the text – with its poetic language and verbal sophistication – settle the themes of love as longing and impossibility; about trade as the dominant mode of human relationship; about desire – as something shameful, hidden, painful and self-destructive; and ultimately about loneliness…
Cotton fields are mentioned only once in Coltes’ text. Perhaps this wonderful metaphor of beauty and doom was born during his last trip to Mexico, a few years before his death.
Source: Ivan Vazov National Theater
In the words of the director of the show, Timofey Kulyabin:
“The play is about sexual perversion, about hidden desire, which in many today’s societies is punishable. There are two actors on the stage – Ingeborga Dapkunaite and John Malkovich, but not two characters. The audience is immersed in the subconscious of a person who is not physically present at scene He lives in terrible inner disharmony because he has realized that his sexual desire is criminal.
But it is his nature that he cannot fight. He wants to admit it to himself, but he can’t because it’s both scary and dangerous. What happens on stage is a projection of his consciousness, of the nightmare in which he tries to come to terms with himself.
Therefore, he invents two characters – a seller and a buyer, two entities that are fighting. The further we go in the story, the better we understand what it is about. The actors change their roles and after a while we realize that this is the inner monologue of one person. The last dialogue before the tragedy…”
Five videographers also take part in the performance, who film what is happening on the stage in real time. The projected details are superimposed on the theatrical picture. The mixing of live and recreated time-space reflects the split consciousness, the attempt to distance and abstract from reality, but also its pulling validity.
Ingeborga Dapkunaite is an internationally recognized Lithuanian actress living in London. She has played numerous leading roles in film, television and theatre.
Participated in Nikita Mikhalkov’s film “Burnt by the Sun” (“Oscar” for the best foreign film, the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival),
“Katya Ismailova” by Valery Todorovsky (award for best actress at the Geneva Festival and an award of the Russian Film Academy), also in “Mission Impossible” by Brian de Palma, “Seven Years in Tibet” by Jean-Jacques Annaud, Emily Young’s Kiss of Life (Cannes Film Festival Premiere), Stefan Voale’s 25 Degrees Winter (Berlin Film Festival Audience Award), Christian Carrion’s L’Affaire Farewell and Occupied, norwegian tv series etc.
Ingeborga’s theater career includes productions around the world – “Slip of the Tongue” with John Malkovich at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago and then in London’s West End; “Libra” directed by John Malkovich at Steppenwolf, “Cloaca” directed by Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic in London, world tour with Giacomo Variations, leading roles in productions at the Theater of Nations (Moscow) from 2013 to 2022.
John Malkovich is a well-known American theater and film actor, director, producer and fashion designer who has more than seventy films in his career. He has won twenty-five awards, has twenty-six nominations, and his career spans nearly three decades and includes everything from the acclaimed drama Dangerous Liaisons (1988) to the action thrillers On the Line of Fire (1993) , Con Air (1997) and the Red film series to Spike Jones’ Being John Malkovich (1999).
In 1976, Malkovich joined the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago. In 1980, he won an Obie Award for his performance in Sam Shepard’s True West, which was soon followed by his Broadway debut in Death of a Salesman, for which he won an Emmy Award.
In 1982, he starred in “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Chicago’s Wisdom Bridge Theater. He then directed the Steppenwolf co-production, the 1984 revival of Landford Wilson’s play Balm in Gilead, for which he received a second Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award. That same year, he received his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Places in the Heart.
In 1984, he won the National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics and Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Supporting Actor for Places in the Heart. He became a star when he played the role of Valmont in the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons, starring Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer, a role he recreated for the music video for Annie Lennox’s song “Walking on Broken Glass”.
In 1994, Malkovich received a second Oscar nomination for his role in the film In the Line of Fire.
John Malkovich continues to pursue more unusual roles and films, including The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; “Beowulf” and the Coen brothers’ comedy “Burn After Reading”.
Because of his talent as a comedic actor, Malkovich hosted Saturday Night Live three times: in 1993 with Billy Joel as the musical guest; in 2008, the show starred Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Molly Sims and Justin Timberlake.
Also in 2008, Malkovich portrayed Jack Unterweger in an actor, two sopranos and orchestra period project entitled Infernal Comedy, which premiered at Barnum Hall in Santa Monica. In 2011 he directed Julian Sands in A Celebration of Harold Pinter at the Pleasance Courtyard for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in 2012 the newly adapted French-language version of Dangerous Liaisons for the Théâtre de l’Atelier in Paris.
Known for his accomplishments as an actor, producer, director and screenwriter, John Malkovich continues to win prenumerous awards worldwide, including an Emmy Award for News and Documentary in 2010, a special award at the 2011 Moscow International Film Festival for his contribution to the world of cinema, and an Independent Spirit Award in 2013.
In 2014, he was also awarded the “Golden Eye” award for overall contribution at the Zurich International Film Festival.
Co-production of “Dayles” Theater – Latvia and Ekaterina Yakimova.
Source: Ivan Vazov National Theater
Tour Manager – Flow Projects
Main project partner: Blavatnik Family Foundation
Partners: BORMIO, Flow Projects and Dailes Theatre.
Director: Timofey Kulyabin
Playwright: Roman Dolzhansky
Set and costume designer: Oleg Golovko
Video designer: Alexander Lobanov
Sound designer: Timofey Pastukhov
Lighting designer: Oscaras Paulins
Choreographer: Anna Abalikhina
Technical Director: Serhei Rilko
Stage manager: Ksenia Vinichenko
Video production: Anastasia Zhuravleva
Chief Operator: Vladimir Burtsev
Video operators: Frol Podlesniy, Pavel Minarskyi, Alexander Razhuvalov
Server operator: Anton Rodionov
Tour manager: Ilya Kuznetsov
Executive producer: Irina Paradnaya
Translation: Svetlana Panceva
