The Theater for Children and Youth on June 23, on the youth stage, will premiere the play "Basement", based on a text and directed by Dragan Dovlev.

Actor Dragan Dovlev has been employed at the Theater for Children and Youth (TDM) since 1994. In the period from 2011 to 2015 he was also the director of TDM. In the meantime, he received a master's degree in puppetry, and from those studies he had an idea for a theatrical performance. After many years of fermenting the idea, finally, the play entitled "Basement" will be premiered in TDM. The play stars Nikola Nakovski, Matea Jankovska, Petar Stojanov, Isabela Novotni and Bojan Kirkovski. In a conversation with Dragan Dovlev, we follow his idea from the appearance to the final realization.

In the Theater for Children and Youth you are preparing the play "Basement", which will be played on the youth stage. With what motive did you prepare the play?

- With a motive to set a puppet-drama play on the youth scene. With a motive to put something that has matured to be staged. I also had a motive to gather a team and to give a quality play to the theater without money. The idea for this play dates back to the late XNUMXs, during my postgraduate studies in puppetry at the Sofia Academy, and my fascination with the narrow space theater and the adult puppet theater. Even then I was convinced that one day I would stage a play whose action would take place in a theatrical basement, where the puppets from the dead plays were left. Then, not knowing how and not knowing why, a few dolls thought it would be good for them to come to life and for some drama to take place in the basement. But it was just an idea, I did not have a story, I did not answer very important questions to get involved in a project. Over time it became clear that the puppets should not agree with what is happening upstairs and life and conditions in the theater began to write the story, the questions to be answered one by one and a year and a half ago I started writing the text, which after two unsuccessful titles was named "Basement".

What is the focus of the play?

- The animated puppets listen to what plays are being played upstairs, what rehearsals are being held and they still have a desire to act, so the main character decides to make a perfect play about some former, forgotten values. All this is interrupted by the entrances and exits of the theater staff. In that context, it is a play within a play, but I would not reveal more about the story itself. "Basement" is not just a place where the complete action takes place in the text and the play. The basement is more like a metaphor for the bottom we touch in our profession. Basement as darkness and dead end. Basement in the constant fall of our professional standards. The text was not written in order to be published, but strictly for this purpose, for this play and in its final version, the actors themselves participated. Something I insisted on during rehearsals. It was very important for me that the actors were incorporated into the story through personal suggestions for adapting the text to their sensibility and the characters we wanted to create. I am very satisfied with the actors and their engagement in this project, so far as a director I have not had a better and more specific process.

The audience knows you as an actor. What was the challenge to accept the complete authorial approach with text and direction of the play?

- Yes, exactly, I am an actor and I will continue to be. Postgraduate studies in puppetry directing were my desire to further my education due to the needs of the theater in which I work. So far I have not had great ambitions to direct and this is my eighth directing in a period of 22 years. I need to feel really maximally ready to think about directing. This time, it is, above all, a project that is not funded by the budget, for our attempt to recycle the old pieces of decor, props, costume materials and use them in another show and to pass everything with minimum costs. Almost the entire team working on this project is employed in the theater. These are the times when the theater needs to be helped and we do it in the way we know and know best, to do something out of nothing, hoping that the theater will have the greatest benefit. We can only promise that we will give maximum knowledge and effort and hope that if the play does not help someone, at least it will not delay.

TDM has repeatedly fought relentlessly to keep the youth scene alive and well. For what purpose?

- In order to justify our existence. In order to do the work for which the state founded TDM. I do not know what is not clear in the name Theater for Children and Youth, everything is beautiful and even vividly explained in the name, not to mention the statute and other internal acts of this theater. We are here to answer any questions that may be bothering someone related to the youth scene. No problem, we will patiently explain that the goal is for the youth to have their own theater, just like the children, that it is both public interest and state interest, at least until the state decides that we should not have such a theater.

Although requests for expansion of the stage and space have been made several times, TDM is still operating in the same conditions. Is it possible in the current situation to maintain both the children's and youth scene?

- A scene is a scene, and what kind of performances there are on it, that is another question. If you want, anything is possible. It is even easier now, because we have more employees and it is easier to organize events. The problem with the building is that the space can not be called a theater, because it is the ground floor of a residential building and it has nothing to do with the joint functioning of the children's and youth scene. If this problem is solved, it will be good for both scenes. As for the current situation dictated by the pandemic, in the last year it is difficult to talk about the functioning of any stage and any theater. I hope that from September we will start the new season in the best order and that we will continue where we left off in February 2020. Our standard 200 plays a year are certainly more pleasant and better played in better conditions, but I have already stopped appealing and calling on institutions to solve our problem. Some announcements that maybe one of the solutions is to share space with some other institutions took me out of my mind and this interview is not the place to explain why it is a dangerous idea. I could not believe that I would like the idea of ​​our theater again, however, to stay where it is and keep it as it is. Because if we lose it, then all the debates on the youth, children's and puppet scenes will be pointless.

(The interview was published in "Cultural Press" No. 85, in the print edition of "Free Press" on June 18-20, 2021)