Don’t Lose Your Spirit

This allegorical play for children relates the adventures of the pear Ragazza, who wants to disprove the Bulgarian proverb that “the pear does not fall far from its roots”. She is bored, fed up with her neighbours and their petty, narrow-minded preoccupations: the French Berry’s snobbish veneration of French culture; the weakling Scarecrow’s inability to scare anybody, the Sparrows’ brazen unruliness, the Ladybird’s hypocrisy in spinning endless intrigues, the Mushroom’s servility, and the wooing of Svetlin the Bear Cub, whose love for Ragazza turns out to be based on less-than-noble motives. So, she closes her eyes and takes the jump (off her pear tree) to start on a journey that will take her as far as Paris. On the road she has many adventures, sees good and bad characters, meets love and resentment, and returns wiser to her roots. Now she can understand better the inhabitants of her native forest – plants, fruits, animals, and birds – whose foibles she has learned to view with more sympathy. The play offers a light-hearted depiction of youthful aspirations and the journey to maturity, of life as an escape on a return ticket.

Selected Productions

Don’t Lose Your Spirit
Don’t Lose Your Spirit

Selected Translations

Don’t Lose Your Spirit
Youth Theatre, Sofia, Bulgaria. Directed by Nikolay Polyakov.
Don’t Lose Your Spirit
Hessisches Staatstheater, Wiesbaden, Germany. Directed by Jürgen Flügge.
Don’t Lose Your Spirit
National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts, Sofia, Bulgaria. Directed by Martin Karov.
Don’t Lose Your Spirit
Don’t Lose Your Spirit