How Stanislav Stratiev went from a cheerful man to a dark humor author



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Slavcho Peev’s story – the best mto a friend

Stanko and I have known each other since we practiced basketball, he is a year younger than me. Then I was accepted to VITIZ and he started studying Bulgarian philology at the University of Sofia. We keep seeing each other, meeting for a “game” in the schoolyards.

They assigned me to Dobrich and Stanko started working for the Starling newspaper. A correspondent was sent to Burgas. We met in Sofia because we both came often. Kliment Denchev and I visited Tolbuhin in Burgas.

He once told us the following story. She boarded the plane from Bourgas to Sofia. Engines started, but they – fer, fer, fer – and they died. Second try, and again nothing. And then a very large pilot comes out of the cockpit.

Stanko himself was very big, and for the pilot to admit it, he had to be a giant. He walked down the path on the plane to the tail, came back, stood in the middle and said, “Abe, you’ll fly to me!”

But the plane never took off. The passengers are lowered, a technical team arrives and begins to repair it. And the great pilot would go around the plane and from time to time he would furiously kick the tires.

Stanko told the funny story. And at the same time he was perfectly serious. We were laughing and he was Buster Keaton.

Perhaps few people know that Stanko’s first work

“Roman bath”

It’s stopped

and not done

script

For three days we thought about what to do and I offered to try it out on stage. And they let him into the theater! But its theater gathers up to 550 people per performance, and Bulgarian cinema was seen a lot then and millions of viewers would see it.

In those days, Todor Zhivkov loved to go to the theater. And where it was not, the work, especially if it was clearer, was out of the repertoire.

And “Roman Bath” could have had such a fate: we were always waiting for Zhivkov, and he still did not come, always postponed. And of course, rumors immediately spread that the play was stopped and played in a crowded room.

One night

Todor Zhivkov arrived,

I remember it was

with a general

After a performance, we always went down to the bar to tell Zhivkov his assessment. We also go down this time, the whole team is sitting downstairs, he is sitting and silent. Eternity of silence! He must speak, no one dares to overtake him. At one point, Zhivkov asked, “Who wrote this play?” Stanko stands up slowly, he was about 190 cm, I told you, a big one. “Were you married, boy?” Asks Zhivkov. “I’m married”. “Have children?”. “Two, Comrade Zhivkov?” “Well, you’re not afraid of children, are you?” – Zhivkov laughed and so on the play when it started, and then more than 550 performances.

In 1981, Stratiev became the main artistic director and I became the director of Satire. We were accepted as members of the Bulgarian Communist Party because there could be no non-partisan people in these positions. We get along very well and I think we made a good tandem. But in 1987 something went wrong with these “up”.

Stanko wrote his play “Balkan Syndrome”. It wasn’t really a play, it was made for the theater’s 30th anniversary. However, there were some things within it … It became a show and we continued to perform it in the theater.

But we had also made 2-3 plays, which were not very successful. And we had a very high plan. We did three nights at the theater starting at 10 pm, in which the ticket prices were three times higher. I read poems by Marko Ganchev and Konstantin Pavlov, Dorothea Toncheva, by Stefan Tsanev. We invited Yildiz Ibrahimova, who was called Suzana Erova at the time, to sing, and the guitarist Ognyan Videv from Plovdiv played.

Something great happened, there was incredible interest, it was talked about in Sofia. And on the third night they cut our electricity. I remember Yildiz yelling that he could sing without a microphone. Ognyan has played a hollow guitar and a Petromax lamp ever since. We stayed until 2-2.30 at night.

“Arriba” were not satisfied with this work and

December 4, 1988

they told us we were

fired

They raised younger people, that was their motive. And we were “liberated” from the party.

Until this December 1988, Stanko Stratiev was a child, his humor was not vicious. He was a sunny man. After his dismissal, he began to change, and after 1990 he became a completely different person – a gloomy person, and his mood turned gloomy.

I went to the hospital three days after firing, but that’s another story. I experienced it quickly, somehow more emotionally, but he, like someone else, experienced it for years. Then he wrote the famous phrase how was the last Bulgarian who left the country to turn off the light.

On January 4, 1989, our dismissal was confirmed. Then

with Stanislav

we did the first

private theater,

before November 10.

It was called “Nadezhda” after the name of the Sofia district, we were staying in a youth home. Later, the mayor of the region was Nikolay Dobrev, who later became one of the leaders of the BSP.

He was a non-standard person who was ahead of his time. We took Zdravko Mitkov as a director and did two productions, after Mrozek and Woody Allen. Tatiana Lolova, Kiril Variyski, God forgive, Velko Kanev, me and three students played. We had a great success, people gathered to look at us. And after two and a half months, they said they were going to close the theater.

When I went to say this to Kolyo Dobrev, he uttered a strong Macedonian curse. As mayor, he did not ask us for money to rent at the club, we only paid our fees with the profits.

One day in September 2000, at 7 in the afternoon, Dimitar Manchev, we were in the theater bar. Stanko walked past us and didn’t even greet us. He walks with his big bag, gloomy, as if he does not see anything or anyone.

He died the next day. This was rumored to have happened in Vienna because his wife worked there. After a while, his son told me that his father did not get up as usual at 9-9.30. She went to wake him up and found him dead in his sleep.

With a smile.

The man who hasn’t smiled in the last ten years …



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