Dreadnoughts. A Play for a Female Audience.

Dreadnoughts?

What is “dreadnoughts”? And why for a female audience?

Because… When a person wants to speak about the most important things, about what is most intimate, they face great difficulty. And they say “dreadnoughts” — or something else just as incomprehensible. Yet what they want to utter are words of love; they want to paint a beautiful picture; they want a horizon; they want the sea…

Well then — dreadnoughts are ships, enormous warships. And they can hold both unspoken love and the sorrow that it cannot be spoken, and the heroism in this lost battle on the naval — that is, on the love — front.

Why heroism? Because a person is still ready to give everything of themselves, even though sometimes it may not look that way, and even though all they truly have at their disposal is only a paper boat.

In our case, a man invites a female audience to speak with them in the way he cannot manage to speak with his own wife. He is not complaining; he is not seeking male support; he hopes for female understanding. And if there are men present at this conversation too, they will probably feel involved; they will be pleased that someone is sharing their problems. We hope the women will enjoy it as well. They will laugh and be moved by the encounter with this man.

And may they then pass his message on to his wife, so that one day, when he speaks to her about “dreadnoughts,” she will hear “I love you.”

That is what the audience will hear.

Stoyan Radev