Description
Book SynopsisThis anthology offers an introduction to New Russian Drama through plays that illustrate the versatility and global relevance of this exciting movement. Both politically and aesthetically uncompromising, they chart new paths for performance in the twenty-first century.
Trade ReviewRecommended for scholars, theater makers, and readers with a serious interest in world theater. * Library Journal *
The ten pieces featured in Maksim Hanukai and Susanna Weygandt’s anthology are not so much plays in the traditional sense, complete with conflict and resolution, as live recordings of twenty-first-century Russian reality: snippets of dialogue framed by text. -- Anna Aslanyan * Times Literary Supplement *
This timely and skillfully edited anthology of plays introduces us to the inventive genius and sheer courage of young dramatists who continue to defy the aesthetic, social, and political conservatism of Putin’s Russia. -- Julie Curtis, University of Oxford
The early years of this young century sparked an unprecedented flourishing of new writing for the theater in Russia. With abundant theatricality and often mordant wit, these plays represent some of the best and most enduring works from a vital generation of new Russian playwrights. -- Christian Parker, Columbia University
There has never been a more important moment to stay connected to Russian theater and culture. This rich, comprehensive, and timely anthology offers a vital and inspiring lifeline for scholars, students, theater makers, and the general public alike. -- Duška Radosavljević, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
A whole that is much more than the sum of its parts, this volume brings together a wide range of “texts for performance” that embody and enact a defiantly unruly theatrical sensibility, each rendered in an idiom that makes them legible and compelling to English-language audiences while preserving their provocative strangeness. This is theater that stuns, wounds, and transforms its readers and viewers. The texts gathered and expertly contextualized here offer us an opportunity to imagine and experience word as action, with culture and politics, emotion and ideology coming together to reshape the possibilities of the stage. -- Boris Wolfson, Amherst College
This well-edited and beautifully translated volume introduces an English-speaking readership to one of the most interesting Russian cultural phenomena of the twenty first century: New Drama. * Slavic Review *
It will be vital resource for scholars and theatre directors alike, and will no doubt spur greater interest in this rich and dynamic era of Russian drama. * Translation and Literature *
Table of ContentsForeword, by Richard Schechner
Introduction by Maksim Hanukai and Susanna Weygandt
A Chronology of New Russian Drama
1. Plasticine, by Vassily Sigarev
2. Playing the Victim, by the Presnyakov Brothers
3. September.doc, by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov
4. The Brothers Ch., by Elena Gremina
5. The Blue Machinist, by Mikhail Durnenkov
6. The Locked Door, by Pavel Pryazhko
7. The Soldier, by Pavel Pryazhko
8. Summer Wasps Sting in November, Too, by Ivan Vyrypaev
9. Somnambulism, by Yaroslava Pulinovich
10. Project SWAN, by Andrey Rodionov and Ekaterina Troepolskaya
Notes
About the Authors
