Tonight at 8 p.m., the open-air Summer Theater in Burgas will once again come alive with "Ship in the Heart," a production that brings together the poetry of Hristo Fotev and figure skating. The show had a successful premiere in March, and now actors and world-class figures from the ice are returning to the stage. Through words and movement, they tell a story about love, the sea and the human soul.
The idea for the production came from choreographer and Bulgarian national figure skating team coach Ina Lutai, for whom it represents a dream come true. "I adore Hristo Fotev's poetry and grew up with it, since my father is from Burgas," she says. According to her, she had dreamed of staging such a production since the beginning of her choreography career, and now decided the time had come to make it happen.
Lutai then turned to director Diana Dobreva, whose productions, she explains, are ambitious in scale and always build beautiful stage imagery. Together, the two decided to combine the two art forms, and that is how the production was born. "We're trying to recreate Fotev's very life — the actors are the physical part, the words, the verses, while the skaters are the soul, the metaphysical element," Lutai says. The show's tagline comes straight from one of the poet's verses: "Give me back the space in which one flies." That exact phrase, the choreographer explains, links the art of acting with figure skating throughout the entire performance.
Lutai also describes specific staging choices — at certain moments the actors step onto the ice without skates, but together with the skaters they build beautiful shared movements. In this way, she says, the two art forms are woven into a single whole.
Director Diana Dobreva backed Lutai's idea for a production unlike anything previously staged in Bulgaria. The two entrusted the dramaturgical text to writer Alexander Sekulov, who admits the task was not an easy one. "Hristo Fotev is one of my favorite poets. Selecting the poems was very difficult for me, because he simply never wrote a bad poem," Sekulov says.
According to him, the real challenge was composing the inner, tense monologue that Fotev's verses represent — a monologue that moves entirely along the peak of emotion. "They resemble no other poems in Bulgarian literature. In this respect, Fotev stands alone in the tradition of Bulgarian poetry," the writer explains. Sekulov chose precisely those moments in the poet's work that recall dramatic theatrical monologues, so that the young actors could reveal heart and soul through them.
The narrative thread of the production is a conversation between the poet and a White Lady. According to Sekulov, she can be interpreted as love, as death, or as Fotev's muse.
For audiences who missed the March performance at the Opera House, 10 actors are once again taking the stage in Burgas. Among them are Koyna Ruseva, Boryana Bratoeva, Petar Dochev, Konstantin Elenkov and Leart Dokle. Figure skater Alexandra Feigin makes a special appearance in the show, and world-renowned figure skaters from several countries will also appear on the ice.
The production brings together three different art forms — Sekulov's dramaturgical text, Dobreva's direction and Lutai's choreography. The organizers describe the show as a tribute of sorts to the Burgas-born poet, whose work remains closely tied to the image of the seaside city.
According to Ina Lutai, the show was conceived so that theater and figure skating would not simply exist side by side, but would complement each other at every moment of the action. That is why the actors do not remain confined to the stage throughout the production — at certain moments they step onto the ice as well, building shared stage imagery together with the skaters.
Alexander Sekulov highlights the particular difficulty facing a playwright confronted with poetry like Fotev's. According to him, the text does not follow the usual logic of Bulgarian lyric poetry — it moves entirely within the register of intense emotion. That is why, the writer explains, when selecting the verses he sought out the fragments that could most naturally sound like a monologue delivered by an actor on stage.
Tonight's performance at the Summer Theater gives audiences the chance to see the production in a setting different from the Opera House, where it premiered in March. The same 10 actors are once again taking part, and the team is also counting on the presence of internationally acclaimed skaters, who will perform alongside Alexandra Feigin.