Award Stoyan Kambarev for Theatre Replika

The President of the Repuplic of Bulgaria Rossen Plewneliew presented the Award "Stoyan Kambarev" for contemporary art to Teatr Replika for their projects with the director Georg Genoux "Truth… Beyond the Arctic Circle", "A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians", "We are the Rubbish from Eastern Europe". (Co-productions by Teatr Replika and Interdisciplinary theatrical laboratory NEDRAma.)


“Stoyan Kambarev” Award won by Teatr Replika

by Nikola Wandov. (Kultura, 23th May 2014)

“For the fifth consecutive year the "Stoyan Kambarev" Foundation presents its "Flight in Art Award”. The main aim of the foundation is to discover, encourage and support young artists in various fields of arts.

This year five nominees were announced:  the 17-years-old violin player Ilina Ilieva; the poet and playwright Ivan Dimitrov, the artist Kalina Mavrodieva and Theatre Group "Replica” with the director Georg Genoux (Germany) and the actor Hristo Ushev. All very strong candidates!

During a special ceremony the Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev personally presented the prestigious award to "Replika". They received the traditional bronze statue made by Nikola Karamfilov (one of the founders of the foundation, who, recently, has passed away unexpectedly) as well 3000 BGN check.

"Replika" won the votes with their audacity, their youth-energy, as well as their evident reluctance to integrate into institutional theater. And not only that but also because they apparently have a lot to tell us, things that thrill them as social beings but also with their fanatic devotion to brevity, and to theater without any artistic cornerstones or deflecting pretentious thoughts. One might assume that this kind of theater is the result of extreme financial scarcity. Perhaps it could be that, but hardly the reason. Since for the members of ‘Replika’ it is all about the excitement that fulfills them and that is being passed on to the audience.

This completely simplified new kind of theater performed by Replika is obviously the most interesting trend in theater in recent years. Documentary Studio "Vox Populi" and a number of other independent production studios also follow this trend.  Even Theater Laboratory SFUMATO announced its intentions to resume its works in that specific direction. Since enough unfortunate happenings are going around us why not react to them socially. The development path of theater clearly shows that we are in a stage of more undeviating engagement with the actual problems of society.

What is it that nonsense that bothers me, and you, overhanging precipice of individual selves yielded to our efforts to understand why we are like that, as a community ...
Why Terminal 2 is our new promised land, why there are more and more deserted villages, why not just find the strength and humanity to think about the marginalized or the minority groups like us, why are we so greedy and cruel, etc.

Of course, this is just a simple improvisation on the rare occasion of an award, but I assume that this all is an expression why "Replika" got the award in this perplexed year of 2014.”

http://www.kultura.bg/bg/article/view/22209