The second International Black Sea Theatre Festival will open in Varna on Wednesday with the premiere of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution.
The festival, which opens on September 23, is organized by the Stoyan Bachvarov Drama Theatre with funding from Varna Municipality through its Culture Fund and from the Ministry of Culture.
Director Stoyan Radev said the new perspective he brings to Witness for the Prosecution is that people today value the truth that serves their own point of view.
Christie’s stories are whodunits, and audiences expect a resolution, Radev said. A century later, however, the question of who committed the crime had become less important because everyone decided for themselves. He contrasted today’s world of post-truth with the past. When one of the famous detectives revealed the culprit in a play, the whole audience felt satisfied because justice had prevailed. Today, justice never prevails, he argued, because countless voices insist: “Whatever the evidence, we will never believe what you claim.” When people protest in the name of truth today, they are defending the truth that serves their own point of view, he added.
He wants audiences to feel uneasy when confronted with the truth after seeing his production, because only a humble person who does not seek to turn it to their own advantage can discover it. He linked fake news, post-truth and the problems that had beset the world to every fact being open to interpretation, usually to someone’s advantage. That is why he wants audiences to feel discomfort rather than satisfaction.
Radev said he wanted spectators to have the courage to live with that discomfort for as long as possible, give up the search for comfort and embrace humility. To understand the truth, people must stop seeking to benefit from it, be humble and be prepared for it to go against them, he said. If they love the truth rather than themselves, they should not compete with it.
He said people now talked about whose point of view had prevailed, and where and before whom it was expressed mattered greatly. Expert opinion had given way to a hysterical environment in which anyone could express a view and criticize the greatest authorities from their sofa. Nobody was interested in the truth, he added.
For that reason, the production’s visual design, developed jointly with set designer Nikola Toromanov, replaces institutional symbols and coats of arms with emoticons. The stage design seeks to evoke ancient theatre and its chorus. Costume designer Anna Gradechlieva lives in Scotland and is working in Bulgaria for the first time. Milen Kukosharov composed the music, and Teodora Popova is the choreographer.
This is the first Bulgarian staging of Witness for the Prosecution and Radev’s first project with the Varna company. The production uses Zlatna Kostova’s translation of Christie’s play. Christie adapted it herself from her 1925 short story Traitor’s Hands. The play has had numerous stage and screen adaptations worldwide and is set in London in the 1920s.
Most of the Varna theatre’s company appears in the production, with some actors playing jurors. The leading roles are played by Siyana Nacheva, Nedyalko Stefanov, Stoyan Radev Ge.K., Veselina Mihalkova, Konstantin Sokolov and Dimitar Kostadinov.
Agatha Christie’s “Witness for the Prosecution” Premiere to Open Black Sea Theatre Festival in Varna THE NEWS FROM BULGARIA – NEWS AGENCY 2009-2025 2026-09-23 05:08:00
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