“Why do lofty ideas fail when put into human action? For me, this is the great subject of art today,” says director Margarita Mladenova in an interview with Zhaklin Dobreva about ‘The Fellowman’s Face’, based on ‘The Idiot’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Theatre Laboratory “Sfumato”, part of the Showcase programme.

You often speak of theatre as a space that must reach the “whole human being”, not only their social or visible image. In The Fellowman’s Face, where is this “whole human being” to be found?

The “whole human being” is an absolutely spiritual archetype. If nothing has been created by chance, if there is providence in everything that exists, then the human being – as image and likeness, as the Bible says – should carry this wholeness within. On their earthly path, they should take care not to lose it. But the troubling question is not simply where the whole human being is. The troubling question is that the whole human being has already fallen apart. And the great question Dostoevsky asks is whether the pieces of the broken cup can be gathered again so that it may become whole once more.

The Fellowman’s Face is based on an extraordinary truth in Dostoevsky: it is easy to love all of humanity; it is difficult to love the ugly face of one’s fellowman. Because up close, the face of the fellowman – precisely because it is the face of the one near us – is always ugly. It is not ideal; it is not the distant face of the absolute human being. 

And the question is: can you love this ugly face, with all its ugliness? Not sentimentally, not tearfully, but actively. Can you discern, in the disfigured face, the luminous original image, and fight for it to be awakened in this fallen-apart human being? This is what Myshkin does. And this is the great question around which The Fellowman’s Face moves.

Of course, there is a great danger when we speak of lofty ideas – of the whole human being, of the good that will save the world – that we may begin to drift away and feel that, simply by uttering them, we have already accomplished something. In this way, everything is transferred onto a plane that is simulated and untrue.

The question is different: why do lofty ideas fail when put into human action? For me, this is the great subject of art today. Is there a gesture that can be opposed to the reproduction of evil? Here, the central gesture is Christ’s – when someone strikes you on one cheek, to turn the other also. But this gesture, too, is put to the test in the world. And in Dostoevsky, Myshkin’s project collapses. He leaves the field of action sicker than when he entered it. The project fails. And what is it in the human being that makes it fail – this is a question that must stand at the centre of the analysis of every serious theatrical act.

Theatre Laboratory “Sfumato” has always defended theatre as a living encounter. What kind of spectator does The Fellowman’s Face require today?

The true theatre spectator is a person who wants not merely to be entertained, but to be moved. Even awakened to something they have forgotten or turned away from. They are hungry for a great event when they enter the theatre. I do not think Dostoevsky is necessarily “difficult” for the spectator. That is a cliché. Dostoevsky can be narrated. There is story in him, there is movement of human destinies through time, there is conflict between them. And on that level, he can also be received.

At the same time, his characters are ideas. Nastasya and Aglaya, for example, are not simply characters enclosed within a certain time. They are ideas with taste, with flesh, alive. The question is what drives them, what defines them, what their demon is – both vertically upwards and downwards.

Spectators, too, are different. Just as at a music concert there are people who come with the score and follow the notation, while others simply feel the music. I rely very much on precisely this content within the spectator – on their spontaneous ability to withdraw inwardly, to think, to enter, to set off after the performance, to allow their inner layers to shift.

Theatre Laboratory “Sfumato” has a long history of stagings of works by Dostoevsky. What did The Fellowman’s Face open up for you in his world, and why does this world remain necessary for theatre?

“Sfumato” has been dealing with Dostoevsky and his painful themes since its very beginning. We have passed through several versions of Dostoevsky; we have had many interesting encounters in other contexts, with other spectator perspectives. These comparisons help theatre greatly in seeing how, across time, the spectator encounters Dostoevsky.

He remains painfully relevant because he asks about the human being from their deepest root. Not from their social mask, not from their visible behaviour, but from what tears them apart from within. What is the human being? Why do they want to create, but also to destroy? Why do lofty ideas fail in action? Why is goodness not simply a formula, but a battle?

For me, serious theatre is measured precisely by this – by the battle it wages. Not by its tricks, images, formal solutions, or by how interesting its surface is. The question is: what is this theatre fighting for? The Fellowman’s Face is an attempt to enter exactly this battle. Into Myshkin’s attempt to save the fallen, failed human being. And into the tragic question of what it is in the human being that prevents this salvation from taking place.

Today, there is much talk about the difficulties theatre faces – financial, institutional, organisational. What, in your view, are the greatest challenges of making theatre now?

Theatre is currently in a very difficult situation. And this must be stated clearly. The Fellowman’s Face is a production of poor theatre – both in its poetics and quite literally. It is ascetic, created with very limited means, almost without a budget.

In this sense, making theatre today requires enormous inner motivation. You cannot rely only on the conditions, because very often they are not enough. There must be a reason to continue doing it despite them. And when we speak of a festival such as Varna Summer, we must also be aware of the enormous labour of the people who make it happen. In the context of the great problem of budgets, this effort is not merely organisational. It is a cultural effort.

Watch The Fellowman’s Face on 8 June, 7:30 p.m., Drama Theatre – Second Stage.