“I believe that even talented playwright Stanislav Stratiev who wrote the role in the emblematic movie Band With No Name especially for Velko Kunev, would have found it hard to find words of solace if he were here with us now. Velko was the kind of actor that celebrated theatre every day, an actor who left a piece of his soul in every role he played.” With these words Minister of Culture Vezhdi Rashidov bid goodbye to actor Velko Kunev in 2011. Words were Velko Kunev’s life – on stage and on the screen. They were not his own words but he breathed life into them as if they were his own – thrilling, saddening or inspiring.

“Whatever it is you want to express using someone else’s words, words you have read, someone else’s words you have to use yourself – they should never be a loan phrase, they should be something that has cut across your very being,” he says.

Velko Kunev owed his enormous popularity to cinema. His roles in films like Band with No Name, Matriarchy, Manly Times, All for Love, Bonne Chance, Inspector made him a household name for generations of Bulgarians. The cast of Band with No Name was planning to get together for a sequel, but Velko did not live to see it.

“It was in 1973 that I made a movie for the first time, before that, at the Drama Academy I hadn’t done any films. Georgy Dyulgerov invited me for the first time. But actor Apostol Karamitev pulled me aside and said they would never let me do a movie. For one simple reason: until I had started acting on stage properly, until I had got the hang of the principles of the profession in the theatre, nothing would go right. And I think he was right. Since 1973 I have made 30 films or so.”

The excerpts you heard are from an interview Velko Kunev did in 1986.  
At the time he was shooting All for Love. Here is what he says about the film: “It is a role and a film that are perhaps the truest in my film-making career.”

For the audience, however, any one of his roles is a hallmark of talent and acting skills. He joined the National Theatre in 1978 where he acted in plays by Radichkov, Vazov, Chekhov, Moliere, Shakespeare, Griboyedov, Beckett, Dostoyevsky and many more. For his role as the priest Krustyo in Ivan Dobchev’s play Easter Wine, in 1994 he was awarded an Asceer. His role as the man who betrayed the Bulgarian apostle of freedom Vassil Levski brought in audiences to the National Theatre for over 10 years.

“There is a place close to Sofia, a Golgotha… There is a place close to Jerusalem, a Golgotha, a place of sacrifice. And said Jesus: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Why didn’t they break him free, why didn’t they attack these twenty people, the convoy taking him across the Balkan range, him and the other two men? A letter written in his own hand: come, come, my brothers, come and set me free from these twenty guards!”

This monologue was recorded by Velko Kunev at the BNR studios and is now kept at the Golden Fund audio archives. Here is what prominent theatre director Leon Daniel says about the play itself:

“I have staged Easter Wine by Konstantin Iliev three times in three theatres, with actors who are diametrically opposed. And every time I put it on I had the feeling that this was it, I had squeezed out everything there is behind the words… But when I watched Ivan Dobchev’s version, I said to myself that a good play is like a good water well – the more water you draw from it, the more water there is inside.”

In 2007 Velko Kunev won second prize at the Monocle mono-performance festival in St. Petersburg. On 2 October 2008 he was awarded a Sts. Cyril and Methodius order, first degree for lifetime achievement in culture and arts. On that same date he marked his 60th birthday with the premiere of Twelve Angry Monologues. In answer to the question what life’s biggest illusion is, Velko Kunev says:

“I am still living with the feeling that I have dedicated myself to something that is very beautiful and indispensable – theatre. I still believe that we each have an innate need to come in contact with some portion of it to make our day complete, to become one with fantasy, fiction, art.”

English version: Milena Daynova