#1 In two months, Hristo Bojčev’s text “Orkestar Titanik” (Titanic Orchestra) was staged twice at two Macedonian theatres – at the Macedonian National Theatre and in the National Theatre in Kumanovo. The text provoked, almost parallelly, two directors, two groups to have it at their repertoires. It is a fact that the plays of Bojčev have been played for almost a decade not only at Macedonian theatres, but also in many European and world theatres. In his plays, Bojčev mainly looks for the small man globally lost in the tempests of our times, in the countries where there is the well known and praised transition, pressured by the poverty and the power of the self-proclaimed bullies; the small man who wonders from here to there, sinks, is lost and tortured by himself and those similar to him.
One of these plays of Hristo Bojčev (Bulgaria), placed in the global cruel reality in which the small man is entrapped is “Orkestar Titanik”. This play, for example, has been staged at around thirty theatres and in more than fifteen languages in the last couple of seasons. In Macedonia only, besides the two in Skopje and Kumanovo, was also played at the National Theatre in Prilep last year.
“Orkestar Titanik” shows the world in which we live with a strong feeling of satire: the transition, lost people who do nothing, except live in some futile hope, waiting and arguing. They are all on the wrong side of the life, and they do not even know the other side. So, in comic-satiric situations, the heroes trapped in the dark side of their current life are created by Bojčev as precisely shaped wonderers faced with the changes in societies, here or there. “They are waiting for the train, or hope at the wrong place. All trains to Europe and the world have some other destinations, other stations, other paths…”
As the heroes of Becket in “Waiting for Godot”, the heroes of Bojčev are in the absurd: the bear trainer Duko, the former railway station manager Luko, the pregnant bride Ljupka and the former artist Mate hope to something, not knowing to what, and the great illusionist Harry Houdini joins them from somewhere as well. He allegedly knows the salvation, and it is nothing else but illusion. At an association level, they are members of the orchestra of the sunken ship Titanic, who know that the ship sinks and they can not be saved, so they play their music… The author Bojčev goes even further: he claims that their music was heard in the waters of Atlantic Ocean even after the ship had sunk – as the echo of the hope and powerlessness. As a matter of fact, the characters of Bojčev consider life to be Titanic, where (the ship, place, dirty railway station where no train had stopped for a long time) we are all passengers. The question is how to save ourselves? Because there is no specific and definite answer, it is quiet clear that only the great illusionist Harry Houdini knows the salvation. Only he can “save the whole orchestra” with one of the most grandiose tricks “Ale-hop”! On the other hand, both the play and its two current performances speak of a truth: that hope is born on the garbage dump. Only among the trash that is thrown from everywhere and everywhere, maybe, there is also the hope to find something.
the art is inside
