Croatia

CROATIA
THEATRE „PLANET ART”
Zagreb

Juan Mayorga
“THE LOVE LETTERS TO STALIN”

Director – Saša Broz
Assistant Director and Stage Designer – Marko Torjanac
Costume Designer – Đurđa Janeš
Makeup – Danijela Pavlek

Cast
MIHAIL BULGAKOV – Franjo Dijak
JELENA ANDREJEVNA – Anastasija Jankovska
STALJIN – Marko Torjanac

This historical fiction is inspired by the story from the real life of its protagonists – one of the most important Russian  authors, Mikhail Bulgakov, and the dictator Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

The drama deals with the relationship between totalitarianism and art, the authoritarian ruler and the author, through the personal conflict between Bulgakov and Stalin, and it challenges the price and limits of freedom and free thought, both at that time and nowadays.

By diving deeply into the values and reasons of the two opposing principles, this drama brings a dynamic and intensive study of eternal questions posed to the individual, society and art.

“Love Letters to Stalin“are a kind of a love-political triangle because the authoritative power enters also into a person’s intimacy, and affects all his relationships, from business to those most intimate. We do this performance precisely because it is not easy to some artists do it. Many of the artists would say something, they would shout, they would roar, but they cannot, because they are fnancially tied up, because they are on pay, because they have children, because they have families ….It is indeed bizarre and absurd that, in the 21st century, artists suffer the similar fate as Mihail Bulgakov.”

Saša Broz, Director