"Cracks" by Olya Stoyanova

Director: Nadya Pancheva
Set Design and Costumes: Yasmin Mandelli
Composer: Milen Apostolov
Voice: Dimitar Angelov
Digital Scenography: Nikolina Mincheva
Photography: Yasmin Mandelli
Featuring: Nadya Derderyan, Milena Torosyan, Diana Handjieva, Maria Rushanova
“Cracks” explores violence and justice through four women who embody rebellion, submission, anger, and guilt, alongside the madness and boldness of ancient heroines. Their crimes are not only personal tragedies but also symptoms of the society we live in, affecting far more people than it may seem.
Olya Stoyanova
Set in a prison sewing workshop, four women produce national flags for a country they have never seen. As rumors of protests and possible revolution filter through the walls, their labor becomes a paradox. They create symbols of freedom while their own is denied.
Their strike begins as a demand for better working conditions and evolves into a political refusal to produce symbols of a state whose violence they know firsthand. The play questions who has the right to create national identity and on whose labor it depends.
The prison becomes a microcosm of the state, a space of control, discipline, and invisible labor, raising the question of whether power is sustained precisely by those it silences.
Nadya Pancheva