2024-02-29 01:38:14
- With Marian Bachev, they turn a random blunder into a hit
- He enters the hospital after being removed from the BKP and fired from the theater
- The biggest shock in his life – Zhivkov asks Stanislav Stratiev in front of him: Do you have children?
- Kalin Sarmenov: With Stratiev, they created a whole new world based on principles
An ocean of corrupting goodness. This is how almost everyone who knows him describes Slavcho Peev. The legendary satirist left this world shortly before turning 85.
“He would not allow us to grieve for him, he died in his sleep like an angel – his colleague Marian Bachev told “24 chasa-168 istori”. – His son said that they had not heard each other this morning and he understood… “Fly away” you are cared for and very much loved.”
The two met when Bachev was a student. Later, sometime in 2002, he and his colleagues
invited Peev and Georgi Kaloyanchev to watch “Suede Jacket”
of Stanislav Stratiev, as they were the first performers of these roles. Thanks to increasingly frequent contacts, they became close friends and maintained cordial relations until the end.
“I remember that when we did the play “Yes, Mr. Prime Minister” at the Satirical Theater, Slavcho Peev played Jeremy Burnham – the head of the BBC – said Bachev. – There we had an exceptional scene with him, but my best memories are actually from the tours. He appeared on the stage when I told Krastyu Lafazanov: “Mr. Prime Minister, the general director is impatiently waiting.” At that moment, when Slavcho entered, the hall erupted in applause that did not subside. Everyone showed their love for him – he was the doyen of Satire, and my colleagues and I had the pleasure of playing with a living legend. When the scene was over, he turned backstage to me jokingly and said: “Thank you very much, Mr. Bachev, for the pleasure of being on the same stage with you.”
Peev played until he was 80 years old, but eventually he began to worry about whether he would remember the lines and how well he would say them.
“That’s why I sat next to him, opened the text of that scene and at any moment during the performance I could help him – I just sat with the text in my hand ready to show him the line. I never looked, I didn’t have to, but that’s how he was calm,” Bachev recalls.
During the pandemic, when they are at a performance, the actor approached Slavcho Peev with a mask on his face for this scene and took it off only when the elderly satirist withdrew.
“It was clear to everyone that it was not my character, but me, who was protecting Slavcho Peev from being infected,” he added. And since the two are a tandem in the production, a curious masterpiece is born.
“We were in Pleven on tour and there I had two exits from the stage – said the actor. – But I had to enter and exit from different places, and
the decor was not what I was used to
So, while I was wandering, I should have seen Slavcho Peev, but I couldn’t find him. When they mentioned his character and “invited” the “Director General of the BBC”, I was not on stage with the play in my hand. That’s why Slavcho replied to Tony Minasyan: “No, as long as Marian is gone, I’m not going in without him.” Krastyu invites him with: “Come in, come in, what will you drink…”, at that moment Tony finds me and says: “Nightingale doesn’t want to start without you”.
When I finally ended up on stage, Peev jokingly mentioned:
“Where are you, Sir Humphrey?”
“I’m here, Jeremy, I’m here!”, replied Bachev.
“I expected to see you here, but you’re not there – Peev laughed and added: And I’m so glad to see you – when you’re gone, Sir Humphrey, it’s like I’m missing something.”
“We wove this into the plot during the production, it was a truly magnificent moment,” says Marian Bachev.
The actor also remembered how cheerfully they spent the pandemic.
“The theater was closed – he notes. – We talked to Slavcho and one day he mentioned that he misses communication through food. My wife and I agreed that as we cook for our family, we will also prepare food for him. Although he has children and grandchildren who take care of him, it was a consideration on our part, and I wanted to communicate with him. So every few days I went to his house, I called, I was wearing a mask, I pulled aside, I left the jars of hot food, and he says, ‘Great, what’s that?’. I say it’s like cream of potato soup.”
A month ago, the two last heard from each other, and Marian Bachev invited him to watch the new play “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”, but Slavcho Peev mentioned that this would happen later, so that his leg would heal.
“Why are you exposing yourself like that,” the young actor jokingly asked him.
“Well, ah, well! I don’t know either,”
laughed Peev. United around the thesis that he should not deal with diseases and “similar nonsense”.
“He always called me, on New Year’s – at 0.05 after midnight, in the summer he would call when he was with his children and grandchildren at sea, he never forgot my birthdays,” the actor also recalled.
When they talked about the past, Peev always told some incidents that deeply shook him, related to his friend Stanislav Stratiev and Todor Zhivkov.
They were inseparable with Stratiev. For him, Peev always pointed out that he taught an entire generation to see the truth. During socialism, the dissident staged a play in the Satirical Theater, which was rejected by the authorities as a film option. That’s why
everyone was trembling when she would be taken off the stage
One evening, Todor Zhivkov appeared in the audience with a general.
It was a tradition for the team to meet with the party and state leader after the performance to hear his opinion. The otherwise talkative Zhivkov, however, stood and remained silent with displeasure. At one point, Dad blurted out the question: Who wrote the play? The almost 1.90 m tall Stratiev, without saying anything, just stood up and looked impassively at the short politician.
“Are you married, boy?” he asked Zhivkov
“I am married”. “Do you have kids?”. “Two, Comrade Zhivkov?”
“Well, you’re not afraid of the children, are you?!” – Zhivkov laughed.
Peev and Stratiev shuddered at the question, but subsequently the play went on and they continued to play it in the theater.
Along with this, Peev often remembered another moment related to heavy repression, which he personally described in an article for “24 Chasa”.
Stratiev wrote the play “Balkan Syndrome” for the 30th anniversary of the Satirical Theater.
“However, there were some things inside that… – notes Peev. – It became like a performance and we continued to play it in the theater.” Not long after, however, on December 4, 1988, Peev and Stratiev were told that they were being fired because there were younger people to be promoted. Meanwhile, the two were also “released” from the BKP.
Three days after this dramatic moment, Peev was taken to hospital. Stratiev experiences it in his own way and becomes more and more gloomy. Ambitious to continue fighting for freedom and truth, the two friends created the “Hope” theater in 1989, but not long after it was banned by the social regime, although queues for tickets were winding up.
Although difficult, Peev overcomes this period and remains the sunny actor who finds a good word for everyone.
Now everyone is convinced that they will finally meet Stratiev in the Heavenly Theater. And it is right under the dome of the Satyrichny, and there are the masks of all the great artists who played there, as well as the authors.
“For people to remember, know and learn”,
Director Kalin Sarmenov told “24 Chasa-168 Stories”.
The project was realized with the help of cartoonist Chavdar Nikolov and sculptor Kunka Dimitrova.
“For me, Slavcho Peev is part of a powerful strong generation that to this day carries the messages and created the theater and TV logic on which we are based today – added Kalin Sarmenov. – It generated a lot of envy, negative energy that was determined by the character of the Bulgarian and the immense talents of these people. How were they all gathered here? Some say coincidence, but here there were principles by which they were selected – based on criteria and an evaluation system.”
Sirmenov focused on the period when Slavcho Peev and Stratiev were directors. He was struck by the way the two shaped the audience’s value system and their principled politics.
“Stanislav as director had created a system for
elevation into a cult of morality,
on criteria that don’t make you feel small-minded, but to take a step or two back and see the whole and your contribution to that whole – pointed out Sirmenov. – Slavcho was telling until the end how the troupe is made, what is the principle. The two of them created a whole world – to such an extent that morality was in the foreground.”
The tandem waited to see someone’s morals, “how much it costs” as a professional, and only then did they start communicating with him.
“This is very important, you cannot be a friend before the profession tells where you are in the puzzle – noted Sirmenov. – And this is what I tell my students.”
For him, the most important thing is to preserve the memory, therefore there are chairs in the theater named after its founders and inspirers.
“Now Slavcho will have his own chair – added Sirmenov. – Each one has a QR code so that people can see the history of each one, follow performances, films. And most importantly, so that we don’t forget them.”