The Adriana Budevska Drama Theatre in Burgas opens its new season tomorrow at 7pm with a premiere of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull", directed by Boil Boev.

Burgas has not staged the play in almost 40 years — the last production there was by Nedyalko Yordanov. Chekhov wrote the text exactly 130 years ago.

Theatre director Ilya Pepelanov plays Trigorin, a writer moving in St Petersburg and Moscow literary circles, while Lyuboslava Marinova plays Masha. The cast also includes company veteran Zlatko Angelov and young actor Viktor Mladenov, along with Nevena Tsaneva, Pepa Nikolova, Aglika Boyadzhieva, Boris Dikov, Asen Lozanov and Nikolay Stoimenov.

Zlatko Angelov watched Burgas's last production of "The Seagull" from the audience. "Back then I was in the audience, now I'm on stage," he said. Audiences are often put off by Chekhov's name, he said, even though the play is billed as a comedy — not one of situations, but one of lines and dialogue. Chekhov mocks his characters, the actor explained, by blowing up their worries, longings and ambitions.

The team is not making avant-garde theatre, Angelov added, but looking for a more modern way to tell the story. The text has not aged, he said — it still moves people even during rehearsals.

Pepelanov said the seagull stands for flying high in writing and poetry, for reaching toward nature and landscape. He finds the role of Trigorin hard because the character is nothing like him — introverted, closed off, pensive and complicated. The theatre director quoted one of Trigorin's lines: "I'm a landscape painter. I love writing only landscapes, but in everything else I'm false to the core."

Viktor Mladenov pointed to professor Ivaylo Hristov, who argues the seagull does not always stand for freedom. For his character, it stands for someone else's freedom — the sense that other people have fewer problems and more ease, while he himself feels stuck. The actor called these two sides of the same coin.

For Masha, the seagull is a longing for something she can never reach, yet the pull is just as strong, Lyuboslava Marinova explained. Every rehearsal brings the cast closer to Chekhov's world, she added.

"The Seagull" plays again on October 14.