by Billie Collins
Nadya Pancheva
Radoslav Petkashev
Alexander Daniel
Ilina Grozeva
Emilia Toncheva
A one-woman show performed by Martina Peneva, featuring live music
“All these… things. Everything is somehow… cheap. Everything is… rubbish. Shiny, disposable, neon.”
This is the world Alice, Bill and Charlie inhabit.
Alice is fifteen, a ninth-grade student with top marks in mathematics, English and history. She never forgets to separate her waste for recycling.
Bill is thirty-five and works as a marketing associate. His interests include fitness, restaurants, vintage fashion and mojitos.
Charlie is twenty-five, unemployed and holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She lives in a house with four strangers and loves animation and 1970s disco.
What connects the three is their social isolation and lack of genuine human connection. In a world where consumerism has reached its peak, status is determined by the things you own, friendship is measured in likes, and the future is terrifying, they sometimes feel as though they do not really exist. In an online world where every conversation is a potential commercial transaction, Alice, Bill and Charlie are gradually losing their ability to be human.
In one final attempt, through extreme gestures that are both unsettling and surreal, they try to give meaning to their lives.
Billie Collins’s play is dynamic, witty, ironic and unsparing in its examination of consumer culture. The playwright conceived it to be performed by a single actor or actress and a drummer.
Peak Stuff tells unexpected stories in an unexpected way.
Billie Collins lives in Manchester, England. She writes plays, screenplays and radio dramas. Her stories often explore coming of age, queer identity and family. Her most notable works include Too Much World at Once (2023, about a teenager who turns into a bird on his birthday), Peak Stuff (2024) and The Walrus Has a Right to Adventure (2025).
Nadya Pancheva is a theatre director with a particular interest in documentary, political and socially engaged theatre. She graduated in Drama Theatre Directing from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts (NATFA) in 2021, where she studied under Prof. Plamen Markov. Her graduation production was David Mamet’s Edmond. Her work combines contemporary drama, documentary material, video, music and direct interaction with the audience. Her productions have been presented at national and international theatre festivals. Neil LaBute’s Bash received the awards for Best Production and Best Director at the Othello Festival in Gostivar, North Macedonia. Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (2023) was nominated for an Askeer Award for Best One-Person Show and won the Best Production Award at the Festival of Small Theatre Forms in Vratsa. Olya Stoyanova’s Cracks (2026) was named Best Production at the Drumevi Theatre Festival in Shumen and also received the Audience Award at the same festival.
Peak Stuff is the sixth project to be produced under the Apostol Karamitev Programme. The programme was launched in 2023 to mark the centenary of the birth of the great Bulgarian actor Apostol Karamitev. Its main objective is to create opportunities for presenting diverse theatrical forms and aesthetics, to offer new interdisciplinary approaches to theatre-making, to discover compelling playwrights, ideas and practices, to present the theatre’s company and team with new artistic challenges, and to give visibility to artists who are new or unfamiliar to the National Theatre and whose distinctive perspectives can enrich the understanding of what a stage work can be.
The performance is NOT suitable for persons under the age of 16 and is NOT recommended for audience members with photosensitive epilepsy.
Anelia Yaneva
Reneta Ikonomova
Premiere: 24 and 25 September 2026
