Milcho Milchev(1945-2007)

Milcho Milchev was born on April 12, 1945 in the fishing village of Sozopol, on the Black Sea coast, in a Bulgarian family of refugees from Anatolia. In 1949, together with his three older brothers, his family moves to Burgas, an important industrial port city where already as a student he is able to join theatre schools under the direction of renowned personalities such as Itschak Fintzi, Maria Karel, Valcho Kamarashev, and Asen Kisimov. During and after his school-age years, he partners on theatre projects with friends that will later become emblematic Bulgarian actors or directors, such as Roussiy Chanev, Georgi Djulgerov, Georgi Todorov-Jozi, Ludmila Zaharieva and Toma Binchev. In 1970, Milcho Milchev graduates from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Art, Sofia, Bulgaria as a theatre director in the class of Professor Sasho Stoyanov. Under the influence of his university teachers, Sasho Stoyanov and Gerda Gloke, he starts to explore techniques and texts from the ancient Greek theatre, Comedia Del'arte and Chinese opera, while also discovering the mime theatre. The same year, he joins the Stara Zagora Drama Theatre where he directed his first show "Suspect Truth" by Juan Ruiz de Alarcon. It is well accepted by the critics and the public due to the integration of music and movements as well as songs with lyrics written by the renowned Bulgarian satiric author Radoi Ralin. His next project was the "The motorbike" by the young play writer Nedyalko Yordanov. Between 1972 and 1974, Milcho Milchev moves from theatre scenes to film sets. He works as a second director with the film directors Georgi Djulgerov for the movie "And the Day Came"; Millen Nikolov for the "The Guradian of the Fortress" and Eduard Sacharias for "Villa Zone". In 197, Milcho Milchev staged his first mime show "A Mime tells his story" with the actor Veljo Goranov. The show was awarded at the Belgrad International Theater Festival and enters successfully the repertoire of the Sofia Municipality Theatre. Since1975 and for the next 23 years, he had taught "theatre direction and performing arts" at the National Academy for Theatre and Film Art, Sofia, Bulgaria. Amongst his students are both Bulgarian actors and directors (such as Kiril Variyski, Ivaylo Hristov, Atanass Atanassov, Plamen Sirakov, Plamen Markov, Boyko Bogdanov, Yordanka Stefanova and Anya Pencheva). He also worked with the Bulgarian National Television on a TV series telling the story of the mime theater. In 1976, he founded the first Bulgarian Mime Studio - a school and a theatre attached to the Municipality Youth House "Lilyana Dimitrova" in Sofia. The first show of his troupe was called "Hypotheses", an allegoric story of a man-bird performed by the young actor Nikolay Sotirov. The next performances "The Legend of the Spirit-Maid" and "Sun-U-Kun, the Chinese monkey worrier", combine Asian legends and techniques with mime. The Mime Studio became a creative laboratory exploring synthetic theatre and a multitude of cultural influences from Comedia Del'Arte to Broadway shows. Beyond the national stages, the mime shows were acclaimed in Germany, USSR, Greece and many other countries. The Mime Studio trains a number of actors that later become internationally renowned mime performers and teachers, such as Veljo Goranov, Petar Stefanov, Aleksander Iliev, Plamen Radev, Ivan Nedyalkov and Jan Iliev. In the early nineties, Milcho Milchev leads the first in Bulgaria university class for deaf mimes. His students perform the internationally awarded show "Genesis" based on Bulgarian myths and legends. Until the end of his life, Milcho Milchev works on wide variety of projects, but always anchored around the ideal of a synthetic, independent and cosmopolitan theatre. He died on April 10, 2007 in Sofia, Bulgaria