A Handmaid's Tale in Spokane

The play "A Handmaid's Tale in Spokane" is by the world master of modern black comedy, Martin McDonagh, nominated for an Oscar in 2023 for the screenplay and direction of "The Banshees of Inisherin." In the incredible events on stage, one man is determined to find his own hand, cut off 37 years ago. In a hotel room like a zoo cage, cast out from the world, he encounters absurd people and everything must be resolved by a candle burning slowly over a tube of gasoline. Elitsa Yovcheva's performance is both funny and bitter, filled with dark poeticism. Through black humor, the actors build a bridge over the abyss between who they are and what they are told they should be. At the author's explicit insistence, Emmanuel Kabanga participates in the performance - a boy from Angola who came to study ship navigation in Bulgaria but unexpectedly finds himself on the stage of the first professional theater in Bulgaria. "A Handmaid's Tale in Spokane" is a black comedy about the loneliness of the modern man. **REVIEWS** "Forget everything anyone has tried to explain to you about "A Handmaid's Tale in Spokane" before the premiere of the performance last night at the Drama Theater - Plovdiv. What black comedy... This is a bright comedy! The characters of Dobrin Dosev, Todor Darlyanov, Maria Sotirova and Emmanuel Kabanga are supposedly trash, but they become close to you - because each of them is you: when you search and don't find; when you want freedom, but it is locked with the shackles of others' expectations; when you long to be high, but you go down the emergency ladder of your own life. "A Handmaid's Tale in Spokane" by Elitsa Yovcheva is a slap in the face to prejudices about who someone is. With the language of the street, with a smile and with a hip-hop piece in Portuguese, it leads you where you don't have to pretend to be someone else, because you can be yourself. And you are no longer alone. Three actors, a dark-skinned boy with a nice Angolan accent, and even the neon God hold your hand - the hand you thought was lost. "God exalts the humble, so I'm not worried." Not anymore." Reflection on the frantic desire to return to meaning. A reaction against extreme social moods in which empathy is a breath of something long forgotten. A call for salvation from pettiness, vulgarity, drug addiction, aggression, auto-aggression, racism, discrimination, homophobia. But above all, Faith in Art and Forgiveness as the only salvation from the cage of alienation.