With the Greatest Respect

**AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS** 🏆 Award from the International Festival of Comedy and Satirical Performance – Gabrovo 2025 for BEST PERFORMANCE - awarded by the festival's professional jury 🏆 Award from the International Festival of Comedy and Satirical Performance – Gabrovo 2025 for BEST PERFORMANCE - awarded by the festival's alternative jury 🏆 Award from the International Festival of Comedy and Satirical Performance – Gabrovo 2025 - AUDIENCE AWARD ...There are no more "Pichagi" as in the good old days – men with cocky strides. Grabbing you from behind, so you feel he is a man... Then pushing you so hard that your hair flares up in the air. Throwing you onto the back seat as if you had hit a pothole, and jumping on top of you – a real leopard... There's no "Excuse me, may I, are you free tonight?" here... Directly with the full shovel – loop... Piercing the sky... Where are these men... horse-riding men, shooting pistols and leaping over chasms? Where are Zorro, Sandokan... and The Black Tulip?! One such man to look me in the eyes and say: "I want you...", grab me, take me far away... I watch my peers... tight pants, beers in their hands, phones and laughter... But a certain kind of laughter – making you wonder how exactly their chromosomes are arranged... Then screams began, convulsions, spasms... Girls passed by, beautiful, past them. Those two didn't even turn around once... In fact, they seemed to embrace gently... Friendlily... I tried to imagine what would happen if such a one said to me: "I love you!"... Is he even capable of loving anyone other than himself? How can I trust such a one?... How?... They don't read books, stupidly puff themselves up in the mirror, shave their chests, drag their legs... money, cars and heavenly gas are in their mouths... How to embrace such a boy, how to kiss him, how to bear him a child, how to give him my life... What to experience with him... how to sing him such a verse: I want to be a wild bird, bold, strong, inconsolable. To soar through the sky – meet you there high up. To tear this robe apart, naked merge with you, pierce the heavens, let you ride me without reins, without stirrups. Our hot moans to blow out the cosmos. And the earth to be stripped bare, heard in vain. How in my pure womb you burst forth and extinguished. In the evening twilight I grew together with you forever. Monologue by Veneta, "With the Greatest Respect" by Kamen Donev