“The Importance of Being Earnest”
On the night of April 22, the students from the Beginning Acting class of spring 2015 presented their hard work during the semester to the AUBG community. In the ABF Theater, three consecutive casts performed the classical play “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde.
Since the plays were part of the Beginning Acting class, all of them were directed by the Associate Professor of Arts, Languages, and Literature Department Nedyalko Delchev. Twenty-six students played on the stage during the evening, in three casts, composed as follows:
Cast 1 Cast 2 Cast 3
John Worthing, J.P – Ciprian Mocanu Yanko Atanasov Hristo Stefanov
Algernon Moncrieff – Artemie Bilevici Anders Weiberg Ivaylo Gatev
Gwendolen Fairfax – Evgenia Filipovska Monika Koleva Mariya Stefanova
Cecily Cardew – Aleksandra Dimitrova Ralitsa Tsoneva Tamar Rukhadze
Lady Bracknell – Katia Makarova Zlatina Aleksandrova Elena Ivanova
Miss Prism – Alla Krysova Lyuba Popova Inesa Daka
Rev. Canon Chasuble – Khatia Kvatchadze Nikita Koltsov Anton Georigiev
Lane – Vyacheslav Babayan Zornitsa Minkovska Chingiz Smakov
Merriman – Ksandros Apostoli Zornitsa Minkovska Amangeldi Kutmanbekov
The plot tells the story of two wealthy gentlemen, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. Jack (who introduces himself as Ernest) lives a venerable life in the country providing an affluent lifestyle for his ward ,Cecily.
He wants to marry Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen, but in order to do that, he should first convince her pretentious mother, Lady Bracknell, that he is dignified for her daughter. The problem is that Jack has uncertain origins and cannot prove the nobility of his parents because he was adopted after a family found him abandoned in a handbag at Victoria station in London.
In order to enjoy himself while in London, Jack comes up with a fake, wayward younger brother Ernest to use him as a pretext for visiting the town. Jack’s friend, Algernon, who lives in luxury in London, also suffers from a double identity: he has invented an imaginary character, a friend of his named Bunbury, whom he “visits” in the countryside whenever he is expected to attend an unappealing social engagement in the city.
Algernon is in love with Jack’s ward, Cecily, and he decides to visits their house in the countryside and introduces himself to Cecily as Ernest, knowing that she is already fascinated by the tales about the viciousness of this name. He manages to win her sympathy and they get engaged. Suddenly, Jack arrives at the house and announces that his brother Ernest (who Algernon was pretending to be) is dead, which provokes a series of farcical events.
Cecily and Gwendolen have a stylish womanish quarrel about which one of them has a prior over the love of “Ernest.” Consequently, Jack finds out that his real parents were Lady Bracknell’s sister and brother-in-law, which makes him Algernon’s real older brother, called Ernest. The absurd turn of the events makes the two sets of lovers free to marry each other.
During these events the characters of Rev. Canon Chasuble and Cecily’s governess, Miss Prism, have also discovered their love and at the end all of them set to live happily ever after.
“Even though I have seen the play already, being able to watch my friends playing it on stage was amazing,” said Lyuboslava Kehayova, a first-year student at AUBG. “I think they coped pretty well with it even at the moments when they got laughed at.”
