A meeting with a therapist. Sixty minutes — the usual length of a session. Time that should be enough to say what weighs on the mind. But what happens when something else is also present in the room — the obvious problem everyone senses, yet no one names?

The Elephant in the Room is one of the new dramatic texts by Elena Telbis, following her play Trash (2019), awarded in a competition for new Bulgarian drama. In the highly concentrated form of a monodrama, Stefka Yanorova constructs a complex and multi-layered character, in which irony, vulnerability, and painful honesty intertwine in an attempt to articulate the truth — even when it is most difficult to speak.

The presentation of the performance also included a well-known quote by Banksy: “There’s an elephant in the room. There’s a problem we are not talking about.” This metaphor lies at the heart of the dramatic text — pointing to those issues that both society and the individual often leave in the shadows.

IKAR Award 2026 (Union of Bulgarian Actors) for dramatic text

IKAR Award 2026 nomination (Union of Bulgarian Actors) for leading female role (Stefka Yanorova)