site.bta50 Years since Passing of Stage Director Boyan Danovski

Monday marks 50 years since the passing of outstanding Bulgarian stage and film director, drama teacher and translator Boyan Danovski.

Following is an English translation of Danovski's obituary as published in BTA's Home News Desk bulletin on March 10, 1976 and signed by top Communist functionaries and prominent actors:

"BOYAN DANOVSKI

Prof. Boyan Danovski, Hero of Socialist Labour, People's Artist and Dimitrov Prize laureate, passed away on March 9, 1076. The Bulgarian stage has lost one of its greatest artists, and our national culture has lost one of the founders and inspired builders of Bulgarian socialist theatre.

Boyan Danovski's creative and civic work was wholly dedicated to the service of the people. Born [Boko Danon to a poor Jewish family] in Ruse [on the Danube] on August 19, 1899, he associated his literary and theatrical activity from an early age with the most progressive tendencies in art and with the ideas of socialism.

For the great theatre figure, that bond gradually became a deeply realized need for complete unity with the struggles of the working class and with the cause of the Bulgarian Communist Party. His contribution to the founding of the first workers' theatres: the People's Stage theatre, the Tribuna collective and a number of studios, is invaluable. During the years of the monarcho-fascist reaction, they served as platforms for the ideas of socialism and outposts of progressive theatre. Persecuted by the fascist authorities and forced to emigrate, Boyan Danovski did not hesitate to accompany the mother of the great son of our people, Georgi Dimitrov, during the Leipzig Trial.

After the people's victory of September 9, 1944, he devoted his inexhaustible creative energy, immense talent and erudition to the cause of Bulgarian socialist theatre and unleased an exceptionally versatile and fruitful activity that earned him a place among its most distinguished exponents.

The remarkable stagings that he directed at the National Theatre: Aleksandr Fadeyev's The Young Guard, Orlin Vassilev's Alarm, Maxim Gorly's Yegor Bulychov and Others, William Shakespeare's As You Like It, Vsevolod Ivanov's Armoured Train, and Ivan Vazov's Under the Yoke, helped consolidate socialist realism on our stage and shape the profile of our national school of directing. Boyan Danovski invested great love and creative daring in building and establishing the State Theatre of Satire as a theatre with a clear and categorical [Communist] Party position and a distinctive creative identity. His stagings of Vladimir Mayakovsky's The Bedbug, Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and others combined depth of analysis, full-blooded characterization, passionate partisanship, a keen sense of the contemporary moment, bold searches for new means of expression, and the artistic brilliance of high professionalism. A vivid and unique artist, Boyan Danovski succeeded in uniting in his work tried and tested mastery with a modern artistic world-view, and the democratic and realist traditions of Bulgarian theatre with the principles of socialist realism.

As a teacher of acting and directing and rector of the Krastyu Sarafov Higher Institute of Theatre Art, Boyan Danovski trained generations of actors and directors who came to occupy a worthy place among the contemporary builders of Bulgarian theatre.

A profound researcher and theorist, he contributed to the understanding of the processes characterizing the socialist development of our theatre and to the enrichment of Bulgarian theatre studies.

In the history of Bulgarian theatre, Boyan Danovski left a major creative legacy and the example of an artist-citizen who selflessly devoted himself to the flourishing of native theatrical art and to the triumph of the Communist ideal.

A tribute to his eternal memory.

Todor Zhivkov, Lyudmila Zhivkova, Filip Filipov, Zhivko Zhivkov, Pavel Matev, Olga Kircheva, Todor Pavlov, Lozan Strelkov, Petya Gerganova, Aleksandar Lilov, Lyubomir Kabakchiev, Ruzha Delcheva, Georgi Dzhagarov, Marta Popova, Georgi Kaloyanchev."