"Decalogue of Anxiety" is a partnership project between Theatre Laboratory "Sfumato" and the National Theater of Luxembourg within the framework of "Catastrophe" - a multinational creative project initiated by UTE (Union of Theaters of Europe) for the period 2022-2023. It continues in acting the strategy of the theater laboratory and actually develops the main goals and functions of its existence within the framework of specific models, methodologies and practices of the laboratory.

Through the stages of an international workshop in Sofia with a multilingual troupe of ten actors, open to the public; transformation of the workshop into a performance and opening performances in Luxembourg; participation of "Decalogue of Anxiety" in a festival of the whole project "Catastrophe" in Porto, Portugal and a subsequent network of distribution in festivals and tours in European theaters - the project builds on a large-scale cultural value; integrates the achievements of Bulgarian theatrical thought into the world cultural picture, unites the creative energies of young artists and experienced professionals; opens a dialogue with a multilingual new audience, works for a meaningful and spiritual life of the man of the 21st century in the context of crises of all kinds. In the context of loss of values, resignations in terms of spiritual bases and cultural accumulations - the project has a contribution to stimulate the public dialogue and to regain the sense of meaning in man. A reverberation effect – by involving the participation of theater students and humanities students and audiences in all stages of the creative “expedition” – will provoke and generate a “relay” of subsequent ideas and actions on today's most troubling existential topics.
Project Catastrophe was conceived by theater makers and that is its strength. A powerful theme, a clearly constructed concept, an open creative space and promising distribution routes. For us, the most disastrous catastrophe is the amnesia for values ​​and cultural accumulations. "Decalogue of Anxiety" brings together theatergoers who do and think - convinced that memory is a real "Noah's Ark" that carries values ​​through the flood of amnesias.
Through Treplev's theater from Chekhov's "The Seagull", which takes the stage as a meta-space from the suffocating props of the simulated theater - to new dimensions of the poetic - we will bring to life ten texts - with ten actors - in ten performances. Multi-voice in six languages ​​on Chekhov, Plato, Sophocles, Calderon, Buchner, Dostoyevsky, Müller, Selin, Ani Ilkov, Artaud, Tsvetaeva, Eliot.
We intend the axis that pierces the texts and predetermines the sequence of the right text at the right time to be in the direction of a way out beyond the catastrophe. Through the great truths-insights-warnings for today's man. Against oblivion, against the disappearance of spiritual treasures, without which man is not whole.
We envision a lively, intelligent, unexpected "here-now playout"; reconstruction of the fragments in a total theatrical spectacle, in which we do not bring the great texts to life, but they "unlock" us - charge us with energy and meaning.
The strong textual content provokes the discovery of a new "theatre text" - a unique figurative and visual plastic language, "new forms" of the theater as living art, which are not self-serving, but provoke a different way of thinking about the meaning of art as human knowledge and an artistic message to today's man . Artistry as a spiritual energy that returns the "sense of meaning" sees a way out of the crisis. Strong modern sounding of classic lyrics. Bringing the "here-now" together with the "there-once." Theater as a surreality that gives meaning and enriches realities.

Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev