Exhibition text
Wide Format is a series of exhibitions in which SOCMUS presents a single poster from its collection, along with the possible stories surrounding it. The third exhibition in the series is devoted to the poster created by artist Lyudmil Chehlarov for Vladimir Mayakovsky’s play Mystery-Bouffe, which premiered on 3 November 1967 at the State Satirical Theatre. The production was directed by Metodi Andonov, with the translation and additional text by the poet Stefan Tsanev.
Mystery-Bouffe was born of the October Revolution of 1917, one of the most turbulent moments in Russian history, when sweeping political change went hand in hand with a rethinking of art’s social role. Vladimir Mayakovsky—a leading figure of pre-revolutionary Russian Futurism who styled himself the poet of the future, of the people, of the revolution—wrote the play in 1918. It was staged in Saint Petersburg (then Petrograd) to mark the first anniversary of the revolution. Mayakovsky’s text entered into dialogue with the directorial experiments of Vsevolod Meyerhold and the avant-garde solutions of the artist Kazimir Malevich, who created the costumes and set. In the spirit of Futurism, Mayakovsky rejected the past, yet the play’s title and structure sit in tension with that very principle. “Mystery” refers to medieval European theatre and works staging biblical subjects, while “bouffe” denotes a popular comic genre in opera.
The biblical story of the Flood is transformed into a satirical parable about the destruction of the social order and the possibility of building a new world. At the centre of the plot stand two opposing groups; the Clean, symbolising the old order and capitalism, and the Unclean, who embody the working class. After a red flood suddenly breaks over them, the Clean and the Unclean set sail on a kind of Noah’s Ark, and their journey through Hell, Heaven and the Land of Chaos becomes a revolutionary odyssey. Rather than otherworldly salvation, the play’s ending leads them to the Promised Land, which the workers build for themselves. In 1921 Mayakovsky reworked the text to reflect the new reality following the Russian Civil War and the Bolsheviks’ final victory over their political opponents. The new version, again directed by Meyerhold, included references to current events such as the defeat of the White Army and Lenin’s newly introduced New Economic Policy (NEP). New villains were also added for the Bolsheviks — the prime ministers of France and Britain, Georges Clemenceau and Lloyd George.
The revolution, like Saturn, would devour its own children. Disillusioned by the state’s increasingly heavy-handed interference in artistic life, by official critics’ hostility towards his later work, and by crises in his personal life, Mayakovsky took his own life on 17 April 1930. Malevich’s Suprematism was denounced, Meyerhold’s theatre was shut down, and the director himself was executed in 1940.
In 1967, one of the most progressive stages of its time—the State Satirical Theatre in Sofia—rehearsed Mystery-Bouffe. The ideological framework of the time required theatres to mark the approaching 50th anniversary of the October Revolution with a production. Metodi Andonov and Stefan Tsanev used the occasion to bring the play into the theatre’s repertoire. Despite its propagandistic character, Mystery-Bouffe retains the dynamism of Mayakovsky’s poetic language and uses absurdity as a means of expression. The play fits into the climate of “thaw” following the April Plenum, which allowed the formulaic conventions of Socialist Realism to be loosened within moderate limits. At that point, Mayakovsky was known in Bulgaria chiefly for his propagandistic revolutionary poetry. Stefan Tsanev encountered Mayakovsky’s early Futurism while studying in Moscow in the 1960s — an encounter that left a lasting impression on him. The extraordinary story of the communist flood that engulfs the world was translated by Tsanev himself. In his work on the stage adaptation, the playwright adhered to Mayakovsky’s own instruction to freely adapt the text to the present day.
As Lyudmil Chehlarov recalls, the director Metodi Andonov showed him a reproduction of an icon as a visual model for the future poster. In this way, the director’s concept and the artist’s solution converged on the idea of recreating an iconographic scheme. A twelfth-century Byzantine icon depicting the Ladder of St John Climacus would serve as the basis for the visual reimagining of the path to the communist paradise.
The poster bombards us with dozens of painted and photocollaged figures climbing the ladder. But instead of Christ, what awaits them in blessing is the Soviet communist symbol; the hammer and sickle. Fragments of the Cold War saturate the poster’s various registers. The upper section, with the Promised Land, is reserved for the Unclean—the builders of the communist utopia—and for symbols of technological achievement and the Space Age. At the top of the ladder stands the cosmonaut – the visual embodiment of the “Man of the Future”. Alongside them, Chehlarov also introduces themes such as police violence in Western societies and the Vietnam War, as well as symbols that made it through the Iron Curtain, like the Beatles and Johnnie Walker. Some figures, Chehlarov says, found their place in the composition by chance, for instance, the magazine cut-out portrait of the then pope, Paul VI. In this way the poster follows the principle of Mystery-Bouffe itself. The play’s original structure is preserved, but supplemented with figures from the present.
About Lyudmil Chehlarov
Lyudmil Chehlarov (b. 1938, Dobrich) graduated in Applied Graphics from the Nikolai Pavlovich Higher Institute of Fine Arts in 1966, in the class of Prof. Alexander Poplilov. That same year he joined the State Satirical Theatre as a staff artist, where he worked for more than 30 years, establishing himself as one of the most significant Bulgarian poster artists. He has also worked in film posters, illustration, trademark design, philatelic graphics and book design. His work has been shown at dozens of international exhibitions and at all the most prestigious international poster forums.
Chehlarov is one of the founders of the International Theatre Poster Triennial in Sofia. Between 1991 and 2008 he taught in the Poster and Visual Communication programme at the National Academy of Art. His posters are held in the Poster Museum in Warsaw, the museum collection of the National Academy of Art, the SOCMUS archive, and elsewhere. In 2021 the artist donated a representative collection of his work to the Dobrich Art Gallery. Stefan Borisov was among the few artists to work primarily on film posters. He took part in every General Exhibition of Applied Graphics, as well as international forums including the International Poster Biennial in Warsaw and the International Biennial of Applied Graphic Art in Brno.
About the SOCMUS Archive
SOCMUS preserves, researches and promotes Bulgarian graphic design from the socialist era. Founded in 2011 as a “virtual museum”, the project has gradually grown into a physical collection, enriched through donations and the purchase of individual works and entire collections. The archive comprises more than 2,000 posters, as well as children’s books, periodicals, philatelic graphics and other examples of applied graphic art. SOCMUS is an independent, non-commercial project founded by Nikola Mihov, Valeri Gyurov and Martin Angelov. Michaël Bordat, Jenny Decheva and Nikol Decheva later joined them.
The SOCMUS team would like to thank Lyudmil Chehlarov, Stefan Tsanev, Debora Dikova and the Aleko Konstantinov Satirical Theatre.
Poster created by artist Lyudmil Chehlarov for Vladimir Mayakovsky’s play Mystery-Bouffe, which premiered on 3 November 1967 at the State Satirical Theatre.
SOCMUS archive
In the early seventh century, the abbot of St Catherine’s Monastery, St John Climacus, wrote his ascetic treatise The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Structured as 30 aphoristic steps leading to the heavenly kingdom through the overcoming of vice and the cultivation of virtue, the text became a popular guide throughout the Christian world. In the icon that became a model for Christian art, monks strive doggedly to climb the 30 rungs, while devils drag those who stumble along the way towards the jaws of a monster. St John himself occupies the highest point of the ladder, receiving a blessing from Christ.
Reproduction of a twelfth-century icon depicting the Ladder of St John Climacus, from St Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula.
Source: Frühe Ikonen. Sofia and Belgrade: Bulgarski Hudozhnik and Jugoslavija Verlag, 1972
Reproduction of a poster painted by Vladimir Mayakovsky for the premiere of Mystery-Bouffe at the Musical Drama Theatre in Petrograd (present-day St Petersburg), 1918
Source: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
In the future, all persons performing, presenting, reading, or publishing Mystery-Bouffe should change the content, making it contemporary, immediate, up-to-the-minute.
Preface by Vladimir Mayakovsky to the revised 1921 version of Mystery-Bouffe.
Photographs from the production of Mystery-Bouffe, Sofia, 1967
Source: Archive of the Aleko Konstantinov Satirical Theatre
Here is what Stefan Tsanev writes in his book The Dream of the Shadows about the period when Zhelcho Mandadzhiev was director of the theatre: ‘The Satirical Theatre back then was genuinely satirical; sharp, merciless, hard to believe it was even possible in those times. But, as the composer Simeon Pironkov liked to joke, mimicking the Party leaders of the day: “What? The Satirical Theatre is doing well? Even very well?! Urgent measures must be taken!!!”’
And the measures were not long in coming. In 1969, Zhelcho Mandadzhiev was dismissed. A year later, his successor as director, Metodi Andonov, and Stefan Tsanev, who worked as the theatre’s playwright, were dismissed as well.
All quotations from the play are taken from Mayakovsky Plays, transl. by Guy Daniels, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1968/95. The Bulgarian translation of Mayakovsky for the Sofia production was done by Tsanev himself, who also adapted the text according to Mayakovsky's instructions.
In 1921 Mayakovsky reworked the text to reflect the new reality following the Russian Civil War and the Bolsheviks’ final victory over their political opponents. The new version, again directed by Meyerhold, included references to current events such as the defeat of the White Army and Lenin’s newly introduced New Economic Policy (NEP). New villains were also added for the Bolsheviks – the prime ministers of France and Britain, Georges Clemenceau and Lloyd George. It was this second version that Stefan Tsanev used as the basis for his Bulgarian translation [and Guy Daniels used for his English translation used in the excerpts below – translator note].
…In 1967 I translated Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe into verse, together with his autotragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky, combining the two into one [in the production – ed.], and since the author gave directors and translators the right to add to his play, to update it, to make it of the moment — a third of the verse text of the production was written by me.
– From The Dream of the Shadows by Stefan Tsanev, second edition, Janet 45, 2019
To translate literally would be absurd… I took whole passages of the text, absorbed them, and wrote them anew. I struggled to preserve the structure of the metaphors and the sense. I conveyed the idea, but in a different order. For me, there was great value in wrestling with this way of translating – in conveying the thought through an entirely different arrangement of words. It was also, in its way, an extension of the euphoria of Futurism.
– From a conversation with Stefan Tsanev, conducted on 24 September 2026 with Jenny Decheva and Nikola Mihov
Mystery-Bouffe
Premiere: 3 November 1967, State Satirical Theatre, Sofia
Translated from the Russian and updated text: Stefan Tsanev
Director: Metodi Andonov
Set design: Stefan Savov
Music: Dimitar Valchev
Cast: Georgi Georgiev-Getz, Georgi Partsalev, Grigor Vachkov, Dimitar Manchev, Zhorzheta Chakarova, Konstantin Kotsev, Nevena Kokanova, Nikola Anastasov, Nikola Kaloyanchev, Sarkis Muhibyan, Svetoslav Peev, Stoyanka Mutafova, Tatyana Lolova, Vasil Popov, Hindo Kasimov, Tsvetana Galabova and others.
GERMAN, p.49 [Eng ed]
The day,
like a bourgeois before the Revolution,
was serene.
People were sitting there
quietly Scheidemannizing.
THE LADY, p. 55:
My citizenship is most various.
At first I was Russian;
but in Russia I felt confined.
Those Bolsheviks are so nefarious!
[…]
The Whites were chased across land and sea,
but by then I was a Turkish lady,
strolling the streets of Istanbul.
The Bolsheviks drew near again,
but I was already a Parisienne,
strolling the streets of the French capital.
I’ve changed countries forty times or more.
Now I’m a Kamchatkan citizeness.
But Arctic summers are such a bore –
no chance to show off a new dress!
THE PRIEST, pp. 71-2:
(rubbing his hands)
And then we’ll divide the booty,
for such is our Christian duty.
CLEMENCEAU, pp. 79-80:
(picking his teeth)
Why so excited?
We promised to share things equally,
and we’ve done it:
one man gets the ring of the doughnut,
the other man gets the core.
That’s what a democratic republic is for.
THE UNCLEAN, pp. 80-81:
[Note: Guy Daniels’ translation from the Russian is as follows:]
Come on!
We’ll roast ’em on four sides – not just two!
We’ll show ’em a policy to remember!
Stand fast, damn you!
You’ll never forget the Seventh of November!
[While Tsanev’s own translation, which, as Mayakovsky had instructed, should be adapted to suit the play’s environment, is much more specific to its Bulgarian setting:]
Set it ablaze on all four sides! Like this.
We’ll show you a policy to remember
Brace yourselves!
There’s a smell.
Something’s burning.
We’ll set your Bulgaria too
alight with revolution.
THE FARMHAND, p.81:
What a bastard!
Couldn’t make up his mind.
All he could do was stand there and drool.
Revolution, fine sir, isn’t Sunday school!
THE MAN, p.90:
The left hand and the right –
these two
will save you.
I’ve finished.
You have the floor.
I’ll say no more.
CLEMENCEAU, p.96:
Shut up!
No more of that!
We’re blue-blooded devils.
You fiends of the proletariat
must labor, sparing no sweat,
for those from the higher social levels.
THE UNCLEAN, p.108:
Make your rifles shout!
Make your cannons roar!
We ourselves are Christ and Savior!
THE THINGS, pp 130-1:
We don’t have any masters.
We belong to no one.
We’re delegates.
The Hammer and Sickle –
the republic’s seal –
greet you.
THE EDIBLES, pp. 133-4:
And we are the edibles, food and drink.
We’ve caused the workers untold sufferings.
Lacking bread, man lacks strength utterly;
lacking sugar, he knows nothing sweet.
Scarcely had we been produced
by men’s labor, when we consumed you (not you, us)
[…]
From now on, bread and pastries are freed.
All that you used to gaze at, grinding your teeth,
is yours, now. Take it, slice it, and eat!