Decalogue of Anxiety

The inspiration for Decalogue of Anxiety came from an image of rebellion in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451. In the dystopian world described by the American writer, culture is society’s worst enemy: books are taken by “firemen” who burn them at the temperature that gives the volume its title. However, hiding in the forest is a group of dissidents who memorize humanity’s great writings. Decalogue of Anxiety is a collage of ten fragments, a panorama of world Literature, from Plato to Sophocle and Calderon, from Dostoevsky to Büchner, Chekhov, T. S. Eliot, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Ten European actresses and actors have pored over these classics in an intensive workshop led by Bulgarian theater legends and Academy professors Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev, co-founders of Sfumato Theatre Laboratory: a sort of Noah’s Ark that carries ten rebels who literally become the texts they have memorized.

This vivid and powerful show—fueled by specially composed songs by Bulgarian composer Hristo Namliev—is multilingual and highly international: The cast includes actresses and actors from Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Greece, Portugal, France, Montenegro, and Germany, who speak even more languages on stage than just their native ones. In our age of anxiety, in times of pandemic, war and economical crisis the timing seems to be just right for this European co-production promoting exchange between the past and the future, the East and the West, empowering democracy and linguistic diversity.

Co-production: Theatre Laboratory Sfumato / Théâtre National du Luxembourg In collaboration with the National Theatre of Northern Greece, Thessaloniki