Snezhina Petrova
Workshop „Soul of the role – metaphor or reality “
Led by: Snezhina Petrova – actress and lecturer at NBU, “Theatre” department.
„The actor must find the soul of the role and merge with it.“ – K. S. Stanislavski, “An Actor Prepares”
While reading this book we may have missed or misunderstood this sentence in its metaphorical sense. Supposing it is not a metaphor…
The workshop will explore the interaction of the soul of the actor with the soul of the role. There exists a common shared space between us and the character, which is where we tap into the well through which we penetrate the layers of the role, but… these are our personal layers, where the shadows, secrets and traumas of our personalities are hidden. They provide us with our living water as artists, they are the residues of our unconscious. When we descend into this well, we stir up the stagnant water and the image is formed in the muck, should we reach the watery vein – a geyser will erupt and the image of this symbiosis will be born. What are the steps involved in this journey/descent into the well… We’ll try to summon up our courage and peer into it.
Requirements: those artists who wish to take part should prepare a short text, no longer than a page in length, of prose, a monologue, a document or poetic work with which they connect, or conversely cannot/will not connect, and send it in advance to sppetrova@hotmail.com.
„The spirit in the work of art – that is the idea. The spirit – that is the atmosphere. And all that is seen or heard – that is the body. “ (M. Chekhov, 1990 p. 141)
Snezhina Petrova is an actress in the troupe of the “Ivan Vazov” National Theatre, lecturer, co-founder of one of the first independent theatre companies in Bulgaria and head of the “Theatre” department at NBU. Here most recent projects of note are “Medea” by Euripides – part of “Plovdiv – European Capital of Culture 2019”, “One Bulgarian Woman”.
In 2024 she organised the first edition of the NBU International Festival “The Shakespeare Trail – Education and Future”. Fellow of the international programs Artslink in the USA, Theatre Treffen and Mobile Academy in Berlin. She has received the European Parliament Award, the Humanities Award in the name of prof. Bogdan Bogdanov, The Actor of Europe, Award for German Language Actress at the Stuttgart Independent Theatre Festival, Golden Rose Award for Female Lead at the Golden Rose IFF, as well as the Icarus and Asker National Awards, among others.
