Bulgarian writer Stefan Tsanev is to receive the Icarus Award for outstanding contribution to the art of theatre. After the nomination by the Bulgarian Union of Artists this month, the award will be presented to him on March 27 – World Theatre Day.

82-year-old Stefan Tsanev is a productive playwright and has written more than 30 plays since 1962. Even in the times of totalitarian regime, he often dared to ask uncomfortable questions - about truth and lies, about the meaning of life and Bulgarian national characteristics. Among his characters are our most famous national heroes – the Apostle of Freedom Vasil Levski and poet-rebel Hristo Botev, who died for Bulgaria’s liberation from Ottoman rule. They upheld their ideas to the end, but faced treachery, fear, egoism and greed, including among their fellow revolutionaries. Tsanev is particularly proud with his tragedy "The Trial against Bogomils." Bogomils were Bulgarian medieval heretics, who in this case symbolize disagreement with the system and the status quo. The play was written after Warsaw Treaty tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968.

Tsanev's latest work - "God’s Violinist” is played as a chamber mono performance by actress Dorothea Toncheva, without special effects, crime, sex and bad humor. The writer has been pleased with the success of the play: “It is possible to talk to the audience about very serious things like life, death, God, art, and high ideals for one and a half hours. So we can have it without a plot, without murders," the writer said in an interview with the Horizon program of the Bulgarian National Radio. “Theater is my country,” Tsanev says, and adds: “I think theater is the last art to die. Even if just two people remained on the planet, surely one would perform something in front of the other.”

Tsanev also likes to talk about the people he works with – directors and actors:

“It is important that each night these boys and girls give out their souls to the audience. I call them ‘shining people ’and they hope to light a flame in the souls of people, especially in this time of cruel and greedy pragmatism.”

Has the writer succeeded in lighting a spark in the souls of the audience?

“I think I have succeeded, otherwise I would not be doing what I do. The feeling is like a tidal wave. Sometimes you feel you managed to light a spark, while in other times you feel despair that there is no point in writing.”

Despite living in the world of theater, Tsanev is a man with a strong feeling for social problems. He sees issues both in our culture and in the whole country. For example, he sees issues in the level of expertise of politicians and statesmen, among whom there are people without adequate training:

“The problem with many of Bulgarian politicians and statesmen, not everyone but most of them, is that they have not been prepared for politics, they have not studied for their work. Why are they afraid of studying? One needs to study in order to become a statesman. You cannot rule a whole country without having run a city first.”

Despite the big number of problems in our society, Tsanev has preserved his optimism about the people in this country: “You can never limit man to the circumstances. People who depend on the circumstances are the unhappy ones.” In an interview with Radio Bulgaria once Stefan Tsanev spoke about the artist’s mission in society: “A writer must ask questions of world importance, otherwise there is no point in writing.”

Questions about the reality we live in are asked in a special way in a work of Tsanev that is yet to be placed on stage. It is called "Cry of an Angel" and it is about a man lying in prison for 19 years, unjustly convicted. Behind bars, he meets a great friend who teaches him high spiritual qualities.

“And when he is finally free again, he cannot find himself and what the old man taught him. That is why he wants to go back to jail where he feels freer than in the outside world. As the old man told him: ‘Keep in mind that there are people out there who have less freedom than us here in prison.’”

The question of freedom of spirit, which has been in the focus of Tsanev’s attention for a long time, continues to be asked in his latest works.

Compiled by: Veneta Pavlova

English: Alexander Markov