Bitef

The Project The truck is a live spatial model. Its freight is its potential and the laboratory nature of its stage production. The truck is a converted Bulgarian truck carrying stories instead of goods. For a crew of 2 drivers and 1-2 artists it serves as a mobile home on the one hand and as a "window" to their nomadic practices on the other. The overhaul of the vehicle is designed to serve three alternating functions: - At night the truck offers accommodation for 4-5 passengers and inmates. The kitchenette, the beds and the computer workstation make them feel at home in any parking lot. - In the evening the truck is converted into a hall with a window at the lateral or the backside of the vehicle, an audio system and several spotlights outside. Where goods used to be stacked in the past, now is the audience, sitting and looking from changed perspective back to their city. Thus the truck serves as an observatory, a theatre probe, a mobile binocular trained at the cities like a microscope. The audience includes 30-40 people from the city visited by the truck, invited to come to a central venue - in front of a theatre, a festival hail or a museum - and transferred from there to a place typically frequented by truck drives, such as roadside fast food restaurants, cargo handling ramps, warehouses or border checkpoints. It is amid this ready-made scenery that the drives will be presenting their stories. Cordless microphones will transfer their mobile biographies and cargo-carrying tales in a dialogue with local customs officers or motorway maintenance people. The transfer to these ready-made stages is a part of the play which unfolds at every next stop. On the way back the audience will be reflecting in the rear-view mirror the goods whose place they have taken. Meanwhile, the viewers will be listening to the drivers'voices coming from the driver's cab who will be telling them about the road in the first person singular while they will be looking back to their own city through the eyes of the nomads. From time to time a screen will roll down in front of the window thus complementing the road with video memories from the archive. - In the daytime the truck will be converted into a mobile archive on european transport conditions. The experience gathered by the four participants during their journey will be stored in drawers, diaries, video recordings and an audio-archive - one customs after the other, one motel after the other, one performance after the other. The archive will serve as a source for the constantly changing evening performance, the en route exhibitions, as well as for a film that will be made from the material collected after the first truck summer season. TALKING TO BULGARIAN LONG-DISTANCE DRIVERS (interviews in spring 2005 by Diana Ivanova) Vladimir Bulgarov*, 52, driver since 1973; since 1980 - truck driver. In the 1980 s he worked with the only international forwarding company SOMAT. This is when he made his longest journey-45 days - to Teheran. Where have you traveled? In the past 5 years 1 have traveled mostly in Europe: Germany, Bel-

gium, Holland, Luxembourg - there and back every second week. I was last in Antwerpen. Is your work exciting ? It was most interesting in the early 19905, when democracy was starting: Moscow, Kazan, Nizhni Novgorod were better paid, and so were Iran and Iraq. 1 knew personally the two drivers who were killed in Iraq last year, however life goes on: as a driver you go where they send you. Has anyone ever refused to go wherever he was sent? Yes, in 1981 -1982, during the first Gulf War, no one wanted to travel to Iran, the company offered a $5OO bonus. Israel was also dangerous and so was Afghanistan (then at war with Moscow) Have you personally felt in danger? In Kosovo I was stopped and spent 2 days surrounded by men with machine guns. The Albanians are a different people, different faith. In Jugoslavia it was also dangerous, I was held up 32 times by police between Nis and Prisren - they would ask for cigarettes and alcohol, they ail had machine guns; I gave them as much Marlboro as I could. On the way back I could only give them money, I had no more cigarettes. In the Soviet Union they also used machine guns, it was dangerous - Novgorod, Kazan, Moscow too - you never know who is who, who is behind the company you work with, once they fired at the owner,young men ata gas station... What do you take with you on a journey? My wife prepares for me grilled chickens, this is what I eat on the way there, and on the return drive I have canned food, salami. I always carry with me a knife, a bigger one in the past, now it is smaller. I always take with me something to drink - a bottle of rakia (Grappa), we often get together with the other drivers. And I also take an icon of the Virgin Mary, a small icon, I am not religious, but my wife gave it to me, she goes to church with the icon and then gives It to me, I also had an icon from a magazine by my bed and sometimes at night 1 would look at it and pray: I have asked myself, for God's sake, does Mother Mary forgive us? Because we commit sins all the time; we should in fact be only driving for 4 hours and then take one hour rest but we never do it. What do you bring home from abroad? Facial creams, detergents...not so many clothes lately, I have two daughters, they always want something to wear but I rarely buy them clothes. in the 1980 s and 1990 s I would bring leather jackets from Turkey (they used to be 20-30 dollars the piece. My wife would send them for 300-400 Leva). What do you take abroad? Wine, and cognac - Slunchev Briag - the Poles like it very much as a souvenir from the Black Sea. Once I was caught at the Hungarian border with 50 bottles of cognac, I gave them 2-3 bottles and everything was OK, but they told me not to try it again and I have never done it again. Sometimes the bottles leak and the whole truck stinks of cognac.