Leontina Arditi in the one-man performance 'For You, Man'

Leontina Arditi in the one-man performance 'For You, Man'

This is a photo of a scene from the experimental one-man performance 'For You, Man' at the elite chamber-theater '199' in Sofia. Here I play the mother from Hiroshima. In the performance i personify without any make-up and almost without any props 15 different dramatic characters. The photographer of this picture, Dimitar Sibirski, was awarded a bronze medal at an art photography competition in Hong Kong.The photo was taken in the 1960s. This was an author's performance against the war, dedicated to the peace; composed of texts by Vanda Vasilevska, Pablo Neruda, Jean-Paul Sartre and others. The screenplay is mine. More than ten of my performances were banned during the totalitarian period [communism]. The reasons: 'snobbism and unhealthy western influence', 'cosmopolitanism' and 'eclectics'. These were especially my performances of 'Vanity Fair' based on Thackeray, 'Crime and Punishment' based on Dostoevsky and '24 Hours from the Life of a Woman' based on Zweig. Those three were banned en block for 'snobbism and unhealthy western influence'. 'The Researcher or Don Quixote Fighting' by Vadim Karastilev was stopped for political reasons. 'Earth, Wait' - same thing. They didn't even explain to me why 'In the Sun and in the Shade' was stopped. The commission just saw it and gave me a curt refusal. However, I think the reasons were neither political, nor anti-Semitic. In my opinion, it was due to the famous envy that colleagues in the theater harbor against each other.
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