The inspiration for Decalogue of Anxiety came from an image of rebellion in Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451. In the dystopian world described by the American writer, culture is society’s worst enemy: books are taken by “firemen” who burn them at the temperature that gives the volume its title. However, hiding in the forest is a group of dissidents who memorise humanity’s great writings. Decalogue of Anxiety is a collage of ten fragments, a panorama of world literature, from Plato to Sophocles and Calderón de la Barca, from Dostoevsky to Büchner, Chekhov and Heiner Müller. Ten European actresses and actors have pored over these classics in an intensive workshop led by Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev, who are also the stage directors of Decalogue of Anxiety: a sort of Noah’s Ark that carries ten rebels who literally are the texts they have memorised.
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