Contemporary Russian Drama: The Journey from Stagnation to a Golden Age

Abstract

In the first half of the 1990s, many observers held the opinion that no one in Russia was writing new plays. However, as it became clear during the Liubimovka new-play festival in 1997, Russian drama was on the verge of what one East European commentator recently called "the spectacular comeback of Russian drama and theatre to the first league of European theatre." such writers as Nikolai Koliada, Aleksei Kazantsev, Elena Gremina, Ol'ga Mukhina, Maksym Kurochkin, the Presniakov brothers, and others began writing the plays, creating the writing schools, and establishing the new theatres that changed the face of Russian theatre. Three cities in particular played a crucial role in this development: Ekaterinburg, Moscow, and Togliatti. Each locale produced numerous writers whose works came to be known as "new drama"—a controversial though popular term that implied a harsh, gritty style of writing that looked closely into the falsehoods, challenges, and pitfalls of contemporary life. What came to be known as the new drama aesthetic can now be said to have been worked out initially by Koliada and the students he taught at his ground-breaking playwriting school at the Ekaterinburg State Theatre Institute. Two of Koliada's pupils, Oleg Bogaev and Vasilii Sigarev, quickly went on to establish their own international reputations. But it was the Moscow-based New Drama Festival that made the notion of new drama a brand name. Moscow was also where two influential new theatres were established: the Playwright and Director Center (1998) and Teatr.doc (2002). Both venues attracted not only new writers, but also a new generation of directors, actors, and, even, spectators. The impact of new drama on a small though important group of writers in the southern Russian city of Togliatti was significant. Inspired by developments in the Russian capital, Vadim Levanov, Iurii Klavdiev, and the Durnenkov brothers Viacheslav and Mikhail formed the backbone of the so-called Togliatti phenomenon in connection with the annual May readings festival.

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