Burgas marks 100 years since the birth of actress Leda Taseva today, 9 October, with an evening at 5.30pm in the Burgas hall of the Grand Hotel and SPA Primorets. The event is part of the Port Prim Art Fest programme. Entry is free until the hall is full.

This report follows our earlier story on the ninth Port Prim Art Fest, which runs from 7 to 10 October in Burgas.

Georgi Toshev, a journalist and researcher of Bulgarian culture, will present the film "The Enigma of Leda Taseva" and the book "Leda and Her Words". He created the project. It is a stage story about Taseva's life and work, shown as a multimedia show with the film and a reading of some of her poems. Festival selector Stefan Bozhkov chose the film and the actress for the festival. Toshev told Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) he was very happy about the choice.

"Leda and Her Words" is meant as a personal notebook. It takes readers into the actress's private world and shows a lesser-known side of her, her poetic talent. Her poems, written over the years, were found in one notebook. The book also collects manuscripts, personal thoughts, biographical fragments and notes on the theatre. It includes a self-portrait Taseva wrote near the end of her life. It also has rare and unpublished photos and archive images from her family and from theatre archives, along with Toshev's own impressions of knowing the actress. Keva Apostolova, a longtime editor of Teatar magazine, wrote a text for the book.

"I allowed myself to share my impressions of knowing the actress, but the most valuable thing in this book is her poems," Toshev told BNR.

Taseva is described as one of the brightest and most enigmatic actresses on the Bulgarian stage and screen. She was in the Burgas Theatre company during the "Sisyphus" period. Toshev links the anniversary to those years, the strongest in the theatre's history. Leon Daniel, Yulia Ognyanova, Vili Tsankov, Leda Taseva and Ivan Teofilov all worked there then. "They were remarkable Bulgarian artists who came together in your theatre, and a new wave began in Bulgarian theatre," he said. Toshev says Burgas has a place both in the film and in the actress's poems.