ANKOKU INTERNATIONAL - THE ROOM OF PLEASURE IS EMPTY
Teater Giljotin / Vasastan
The Room of Pleasure is Empty (Bulgaria) is based on the team’s documented life experiences and original
texts. The performance is the result of a two-year laboratory process exploring the human inner
stage in relation to the Uncanny. The capital of the unconscious becomes the object of dramatic
exploration, reinterpretation, enactment. We invite the darkest side of the soul onto the stage. We
manifest those encapsulated and rejected desires that seek their way to appear in reality through
distorted manipulative fetishized actions. There, body abuse, guilt, and self-abasement lead to the
unattainable end of the human unconscious projected into the space of the Empty Room.
Featuring: Juliana Saiska, Yana Moroz, Elica Alexieva, Elena Dimitrova, Velislav Pavlov, Nino
Gomes
Idea: MUTESE + Ya (M. Razdashki, J. Saiska, T. Kotov, E. Gatsov, S. Pavlov, E. Dimitrova + Y.
Moroz)
Director: Juliana Saiska
Supervision of the process: Theodor Kotov
Scenography and lighting: Ralitza Toneva
Composer: Elica Alexieva
Sound design and original songs: Nino Gomez
Dramaturgical consultant: Mladen Alexiev
Anti-dramaturgy: Tzveta Sofronieva
Duration: 105 minutes
Age limit: 18+
About Emergency Theater Foundation
The Emergency Theater Foundation creates space for the human inner scene, for the search of
identity and fulfillment in a context the current social and cultural reality. Our performances are built
like a stage gathering, and at the same time they carry the essence of a therapeutic session. By
bringing experience from various art fields, we create our products on the principle of a support
group, both internally as a team and together with the audience, focusing on giving a new meaning
to what we’ve experienced on the stage. Just as in an emergency room, we are united by a sense
of urgency and the need for life-saving intervention in order to overcome the symptoms of anxiety.
We work on various ways of expressing tolerance and also awareness of the danger when life-
sustaining conditions in nature and society rapidly disappear and people face loss and alienation.
We study the human dialogue with the world. We work with texts that explore the aesthetics of the
Anthropocene. The focus is on the sociocultural wounds caused by the world we live in, on the
individual sensitivity and the ways to overcome psychological pain through drama, performance
and workshops.
The foundation is a NGO based in Sofia, Bulgaria with members Juliana Saiska (founding member,
author, director, actor, psychodrama therapist), Elena Dimitrova (author, actor, director), Velislav
Pavlov (actor), Yana Moroz (anthropologist, actor), Elica Alexieva (composer, musician), Theodor
Kotov (psychodrama therapist, actor). Nino Gomes (musician and sound designer) and Sophia
Kaneva (cultural studies).
Emergency Theater Foundation was created in 2021 on the basis of our joint projects from 2017, in
collaboration with the poet and playwright Tzveta Sofronieva.