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60th Anniversary Celebration

Theatre and Music Centre Kardzhali/Bulgaria

Season 2020/2021

In the conditions of COVID-19 the Theatre and Music Centre Kardzhali celebrates its 60th anniversary. Read the letters that have been written at this occasion.

The theater is that magic, the only one of its kind, that gathers in a hall all manner of men and keeps them together for hours in a unique fashion.

Theater is like bread – the more it is today’s, the more it is tasty.

Since its foundation and to this day, the theater in Kardzhali has made its name with its competent presence among the cultural institutes in the country. There are scores of titles from our poster over the years that have obtained the honest applause of the audiences not just in Kardzhali, not just in all of Bulgaria, but abroad as well. Some of them brought in acknowledgement and awards from a line of forums of theatrical art in this country and abroad. What is inevitable, the upsurges alternate with periods of esthetic achievements open to discussion, but that is the circumrotation of art.

Among the significant acknowledgements of our theater is also the membership in the ЕТС (European Theater Convention). The Kardzhali theater was the first in Bulgaria to have been admitted as a full member the biggest network of public theaters in Europe. That was an exclusive achievement and a reason for us to be proud at our 60th anniversary. Our participation in the organization opens up wide opportunities for development. It’s an honor and a responsibility which we took on.   

Theater is life! May God send us good health and long years so that we carry life into the years ahead!

Happy holiday!

Galab Bochukov
Director of the Theater and Music Center Kardzhali

Esteemed Mr. Bochukov,

To me it’s an honor to greet you on the occasion of 60 years since the theatre in Kardzhali was created!

Since 1960, when the Dimitar Dimov State Theater was founded with three artistic formations – stage, drama and puppets and till this day, with the talent of its illustrious creators and their successors, the theater has continuously been proving that nothing can replace the immediate touch with the great specimens of the stage. I believe that only people truly dedicated to art can create dramatic masterpieces and enrich the gorgeous actors’ and directors’ school Bulgaria is entitled to be proud of.

For I am convinced that the more a creator gives from himself, the more is there to remain for future generations. And, giving away all your talent, you create with your original reincarnations the harmony which makes our world more sensible and more beautiful.

Boil Banov
Minister of Culture

Esteemed Mr. Bochukov,

For 60 years now, the theater in Kardzhali has been a living organism that breathes with the élan and rapture of the public. It enchants and inspires, unveiling creative secrets and making the viewers fall in love with the aroma of magic behind the curtains forever. They say that you, the preachers in Melpomene’s temple, have been chosen by God, because you have eyes for what’s unseen and you make the world more reasonable, more understandable and more bearable for us who have just ordinary sight. Art, Nietzsche says, was given to us so that reality does not kill us.  Our life is full of encounters and farewells, with spells and revelations, with utopias and dreams. And on the stage they come alive and mature, acquire a shape and a color, filling our senses with delight. There is no other mystery to make us better, more sincere, more transparent than the light. Happy anniversary! Be true to the emotion, to daring and wisdom, to the choice to re-create, to share your gift and educate others with a taste for what’s beautiful. You are the spirit that reigns over matter. Be healthy, smiling, frank, sympathizing and initiated into the magic called the theater. Don’t stop dreaming, transforming the world and making it more perfect! 

Tsveta Karayancheva
Chairwoman of the 44th National Assembly

Dear Mr Bochukov, dear colleagues and artists of Theatre and Music Centre Kardzhali, dear friends of the theatre,

I want to congratulate you on behalf of the European Theatre Convention, Europe’s network of public theatres, its team, and its Board of Directors, on the 60th anniversary of the Theatre and Music Centre Kardzhali.

Only a few months ago, you took the decision to join the European Theatre Convention, as the first ever Bulgarian member theatre of our European network.

I believe that it was a decision relying on the true desire of the people who create theatre at the Theatre and Music Centre Kardzhali, to connect with partners from all over Europe and to include your work on the international artistic map. We could not have foreseen then what the months ahead would bring, and how important the solidarity that is at the core of the European Theatre Convention’s work would be when theatres had to be closed and all travels cancelled during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As we are now progressively reopening our houses throughout Europe, we must insist on the fact that theatre is an essential part of European cultural and linguistic diversity, and that contemporary creation is the fundamental condition when promoting this diversity to safeguard and strengthen European cultural heritage. As representatives of the liveliest of art forms, we strive to reach larger and more diverse audiences, offering our stages to an open and inclusive European society. Our joint work must therefore be based on the principles of artistic freedom of expression and democratic European values of equality, tolerance, non-discrimination, and solidarity, as well engage in our complex present, in order to create the future.

Going on this path together with the Theatre and Music Centre Kardzahli, through new relations, exchanges and future collaborations is a wonderful gift you have made to yourself and to us!

Serge Rangoni
President of the European Theatre Convention’s Board of Directors
General Manager of Théâtre de Liège/Belgium

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