based on the novel by Georgi Gospodinov
Jernej Lorenci
Dino Pešut and Jernej Lorenci
Branko Hojnik
Belinda Radulović
Žiga Hren
Albena Stavreva, Alexander Tonev, Aneta Ivanova, Valentin Ganev, Vasilena Vincenzo, Darina Radeva, Dimitar Nikolov, Veselin Mezekliev, Konstantin Elenkov, Paraskeva Djukelova, Radena Valkanova, Stelian Radev, Teodora Duhovnikova, Hristo Petkov
For the second time, one of the most compelling figures in European theatre, Slovenian director Jernej Lorenci, will work with the company of the National Theatre. Following his production of Orpheus, Lorenci returns to Sofia to adapt Georgi Gospodinov’s novel The Physics of Sorrow (2012) for the stage. The novel has been translated into more than 20 languages. It won the prestigious international Jan Michalski Prize in 2016 and was shortlisted for the PEN American Award for translated literature, the Premio Strega Europeo, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Award, the Gregor von Rezzori Prize and others. According to The New Yorker, Georgi’s true quest in The Physics of Sorrow is to find a way to live with sorrow, allowing it to become a source of empathy and beneficial hesitation. The short animated film The Physics of Sorrow, based on the novel and directed by Theodore Ushev, received numerous international awards and was shortlisted for the Academy Awards in 2020.
In the novel, time does not follow a chronological order; it is fragmented, cyclical and experienced from within. The Physics of Sorrow explores the ways in which human beings experience time, history and loss through memory, empathy and storytelling. In Saint Augustine’s understanding, time exists above all within human consciousness rather than as an objective flow. Past, present and future coexist; memory alters and bends time, while the present remains fragile and fleeting.
The book is structured as an archive, a suitcase or a labyrinth of memories. Personal recollections intertwine with family history and collective memory. Remembering becomes an ethical act—an attempt to preserve what would otherwise disappear. Memory is not a precise record of facts, but something unstable, fragmented and deeply emotional. Sorrow is not a weakness, but a form of knowledge—a quiet resistance to a present day obsessed with the pursuit of happiness at any cost. The novel is an elegy for everything that is gradually disappearing. Writing becomes an attempt to save what is on the verge of being lost forever.
Jernej Lorenci’s production creates a theatrical adaptation that transforms this literary labyrinth into a living stage world of memories, stories, images, voices and bodies. At its centre is the human being, trapped within their own labyrinth of past and future, fears and hopes, loneliness and longing for closeness. The myth of the Minotaur intertwines with personal and collective memory, while individual human destinies form a shared narrative about generations, lost time and our ability to feel another person’s pain as our own.
Through his deeply emotional and ritualistic theatrical language, Jernej Lorenci creates a production in which the ensemble becomes a single organism and the stage becomes a space for shared experience. Through music, personal stories, memories and collective presence, the actors search for what connects us beyond our differences: our shared humanity and our common present. A production about empathy as a form of resistance. About the human need to preserve the traces of the past and to dream the future together.
Because, as Georgi Gospodinov reminds us, after the end of the world, perhaps the most important thing is to open our arms and embrace one another.
Mira Todorova
Nikolay Yordanov
Olga Nedyalkova, Marinela Sivcheva
Nikolay Dimitrov NAD
Yanina Petrova
Premiere: 6 and 7 October 2026
Jernej Lorenci Begins Work on The Physics of Sorrow at the National Theatre – Kultura.bg, 22 June 2026
