Lora Vangelova speaks with director Zafir Radjab about the production ‘Albion’ by Mike Bartlett, produced by Nikolay Binev Youth Theatre and presented as part of the festival’s Showcase Programme.
Was your first encounter with Albion a coincidence, or the result of a long search for such play?
I’ve long been an admirer of Mike Bartlett and I am familiar with most of his work, but Albion was one of the few plays I hadn’t read. When I first came across the synopsis of the play, it didn’t attract me at all. A summary about a grieving woman who buys a garden didn’t strike me as particularly compelling. Yet I reminded myself that Bartlett is a deeply social writer who explores issues with remarkable depth and never settles for superficiality. He is exactly as uncompromising as I believe a playwright should be. So, I decided to read the play anyway – and it completely drew me in. In that sense, my encounter with Albion was accidental, but my encounter with the author certainly was not. As I read it, I discovered many of the themes that fascinate me most, and I realised that this was Mike Bartlett at his very best.
How do you approach a text that is so strongly shaped by a specific political and social context? Albion is deeply connected to contemporary Britain, its culture, and its history.
The truth is that while the play may appear highly specific, great drama always contains something universal. It is rooted in fundamental human concerns that can be traced back to antiquity and classical texts. Once you identify those underlying themes through a contemporary lens—as Bartlett does so brilliantly – they inevitably transcend geography. At first glance, Albion may seem like a play about distant people in a distant place. Its themes are profoundly human and universally recognizable. We all experience grief. We all fall in love. We all lose people we care about. These are experiences shared by everyone. It is quite easy to move beyond the political nuances specific to a particular country and treat them mainly as a framework for the characters. What happens to them is not defined by those circumstances. After all, a person crying in England does not cry differently from someone born here. Tears, love, and all those fundamentally human experiences have no gender, ethnicity, or religion.
The garden is the central image of the play. What does it symbolise for you and in your production?
The truth is that the garden symbolises many things, but what it means to me personally is something I would rather keep to myself. Every spectator should be free to discover what the garden represents for them. In the scenography, the garden takes the form of a closed box within which the action unfolds – a visual image I find particularly compelling. I have always been intrigued by notions of enclosure: the enclosed individual, the closed mind, the lonely person, the outsider, the isolated one. Similar images appear in other productions of mine as well. Throughout our lives, we are enclosed in one way or another. We place ourselves inside different boxes and rooms. We are confined to planet Earth, and we are always confined within our own minds. The very first boxes we create exist in our consciousness. So, when is a person truly free? When are we no longer inside a box? We spend our entire lives placing ourselves within boundaries, whether formal or invisible. Observing and exploring this condition across different productions fascinates me, and the plays I choose often allow such images to emerge on stage.
Is there a line, scene, or moment that you hope will stay with audiences after the performance ends?
There are many, but I’ll try to choose the most significant one. One of my favorite lines is: “He’s gone. There is only dust.” To me, it is a powerful warning. We should strive to live our lives fully and enjoy them as much as possible – without losing ourselves in extremes – before we reach the moment when “he’s gone,” or when we ourselves are gone.
Watch ‘Albion’ on 9 June at 8:15 PM at the Drama Theatre, Main Stage.