“For me, going through this text has something purifying about it. Almost like a personal sermon – both to myself and to the audience,” actor Yordan Rasin shares with Zhaklin Dobreva in a conversation about his role in ‘Cries from the Underground’, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘Notes from Underground’ and presented as part of the Showcase programme.

Cries from the Underground is a performance in which the actor is left alone with the text, the audience, and himself. What was the greatest challenge for you in this encounter with Dostoevsky?

There were several challenges. The first, of course, was the form of the one-man performance itself, because this is the first time I have done one. It is a very particular territory – the actor has to walk the entire path of the performance alone, to carry the text, the action, and the encounter with the audience from beginning to end.

The second major challenge was Dostoevsky himself and his magnificent text. Even the very act of approaching such a text is already a trial. Regardless of the final result, the decision to pass through such depth is a challenge in itself – if you truly want to touch it, and not simply move across its surface.

And the third challenge, which in fact brings the first two together, is the encounter with the audience. The very event of the performance – from beginning to end, from the first moment you start to the final full stop – always remains unpredictable. The meeting between the man from the underground, myself as an actor, and the audience is something that is born anew every time.

Dostoevsky’s character is at once biting, vulnerable, self-observing, and self-destructive. Which side of him was the most difficult for you to let in as an actor?

I could not really say what was “difficult” and what was “easy”. I do not think of this process in those terms. For me, going through this text has something purifying about it. Almost like a personal sermon – both to myself and to the audience.

The words Dostoevsky uses, the thoughts the character arrives at, the states he passes through – in some way, they are valid for every thinking human being. And that is very powerful. From conversations with friends and colleagues who have seen the performance, I sense that everyone finds something of their own in this text. Everyone recognises themselves somewhere in it.

That is why I do not know whether it is a matter of allowing one side or another of the character into myself. Rather, the text already contains these human states. And I had the fate – or the luck – for this text to pass through me at this exact moment. For my own thoughts, my own states, my own fears to pass through it as well, and in that way to give it density, voice, and force.

In an interview about the performance, Stoyan Radev described the very act of speaking as the event of the production – the Underground Man does not merely think, but speaks before the audience as if addressing all of humanity. As an actor, how do you find the boundary at which thought can no longer be “spoken”, but must be “cried out”?

I think that is precisely where the core of this text lies – in the scream. Of course, we do not shout throughout the entire performance, but there are moments when the voice inevitably has to rise. There is one central moment, one true cry, which functions almost as the centre of the performance.

But for me, there is also another cry – an inner one, a quiet one, a cry of the soul. It comes towards the end of the performance. This cry does not necessarily have to be physically loud, but it may be even deeper. I hope that every evening we manage to reach precisely those points – the moment when thought can no longer simply be spoken, because something much larger has accumulated within it.

What was the most important thing the director’s work gave you as a key to the character? Was there a particular line, gesture, or thought from which your “Underground Man” began?

One of the most important keys Stoyan Radev gave me was the idea of the stand-up format. At first, it both attracted me greatly and frightened me greatly. Dostoevsky and stand-up – it sounds unexpected, even risky. But the more we worked, the more I began to believe in this form. Now it seems to me that it fits this text very naturally.

The other very important key was the sense that this man truly wants to speak to all of humanity. Not to one or two people, but to millions. As if he wants to step out before an enormous audience and say everything he has accumulated inside himself. This was a very powerful impulse for me as an actor, because it pushed me towards action. And that is important — not to fall into mere talking, into reciting a text without inner action.

I also watched several films about stand-up comedians. I was very struck by a line in Bob Fosse’s film Lenny, in which Dustin Hoffman plays Lenny Bruce. There is a thought there about how wonderful it is to step onto a stage, speak, and have someone listen to you. Something so simple, and yet so essential. It helped me a great deal to feel the Underground Man’s desire to be heard.

The performance speaks of a person who cannot find his place in the world, but also cannot reconcile himself with himself. Do you recognise traits of the contemporary human being in this character?

Yes, of course. This text is relevant not only today – it will remain relevant as long as human beings exist. Because it speaks about things that are deeply human and do not depend on time.

There are sentences in it that sound as if they were written for our own time. For example: “In our negative age, it is terribly pleasant to receive positive reviews.” That is Dostoevsky, and yet it sounds entirely contemporary. In that sense, I do not think I need to provide an answer on his behalf. Dostoevsky himself has already given it – far more precisely and far more profoundly.

Did this process awaken in you a desire for further encounters with the form of the one-man show?

I think every actor has, at least once, thought about doing a one-man performance. It is a particular kind of trial, and probably always carries with it a certain interest, a certain desire that exists somewhere inside the actor. I had thought about it too, but it had never been a concrete goal.

Now it has happened. I like it. And who knows – perhaps it will happen again.

Cries from the Underground on 7 June at 8:00 p.m. at the Drama Theatre – Main Stage.=