Reality Performance: Documentary Trends in Post-Soviet Russian Theatre

Abstract

This article sets out to analyse a particular development in recent Russian drama and theatre: documentarism. This phenomenon is placed into a socio-political and cultural context in order to identify its positioning towards postmodernism. The particular features of the documentary theatre and the verbatim technique it employs are analysed in the work of teatr.doc and the playwrights that surround this off-theatre. The themes of teatr.doc are identified, as is the device of the ecolect used to characterize particular marginal social groups in each of the productions and plays. This approach is discussed in depth with reference to September.doc by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov, a play using blogs about the Beslan tragedy to address issues of ethnic conflicts, in order to explore through the text established notions of Russian patriotism and terrorism.

Notes

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Leverhulme Trust for facilitating collaboration on this project through a Visiting Professorship for Mark Lipovetsky during autumn 2006 and to the Arts Faculty Research Fund of Bristol University for subsidising travel to Russia for Birgit Beumers.

See Mark Lipovetsky, Russian Postmodernist Fiction: Dialogue with Chaos (Armonk and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999).

We refer here and in the following to Soviet historical periods: Stalin era (1928–1953); Thaw under Khrushchev (1954–1964); Stagnation under Brezhnev (1965–1982); and Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika (1986–1991).

See <http://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm> [accessed 24 April 2007].

Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1985), p. 34.

Aleks Sierz, In-Yer-Face-Theatre (London: Faber, 2001), p. 207.

Eduard Boyakov with Marina Davydova and Daniil Dondurei, ‘Nuzhny novye formy. Novye formy nuzhny?’, Iskusstvo kino, 2 (2004), 23.

Birgit Beumers, ‘Commercial Enterprise on the Stage: Changes in Russian Theatre Management between 1986 and 1996’, Europe-Asia Studies, 48.8 (1996), 1403–16.

The manifesto of teatr.doc has obviously been inspired by the manifesto of the Danish Dogme. The founders of the theatre thus define their aesthetics: ‘No bulky scenery. No ramps, scaffolds, columns and steps. No music as a means of the director's expressiveness (music “from the theatre”). Music is permitted as live performance during the show. No dance and/or plasticity as means of the director's expressiveness. No director's “metaphors”. Actors play only their real age. Actors play without make-up unless the use of make-up is a distinctive feature or part of the character's professional features.’ Cited from: V. Zabaluev and A. Zenzinov, ‘Vremia verbatima: Ot totalitarnogo teatra k poisku novoi ekzistential'nosti’, Sovremennaia dramaturgiia, 1 (2004), 202–05 (p. 204). It has to be noted that Russian documentary theatre soon departed from this rigorous programme.

The Moscow Art Theatre (MKhAT) and the Golden Mask Festival, directed by Eduard Boyakov, hosted the festival in 2002 and 2003; it took place in St Petersburg's Lensovet Theatre in 2004, at the Meyerhold Centre in Moscow in 2005, and at the Praktika Theatre, Moscow, in 2006.

The delegation included Elyse Dodgeson, Stephen Daldry, James Macdonald and Ramin Gray. The seminar was organised by the British Council and the Golden Mask Festival.

They included: Nina Belenitskaya, Olga Darfi, Vladimir Zabaluev and Alexei Zenzinov, Sergei Kaluzhanov, Ekaterina Narshi, Vladimir Pankov, Alexander Rodionov, Galina Sinkina, Alexander Vartanov, Ivan Vyrypaev, as well as Natalia Vorozhbit and Maxim Kurochkin from Kiev; Konstantin Galdaev and Yana Glenbotskaya from Keremovo's ‘Lozha’ Theatre; Elena Kaluzhskikh with the Cheliabinsk Theatre ‘Baby’; Vadim Levanov, Viacheslav and Mikhail Durnenkov, and Yuri Klavdiev from Togliatti; Olga Pogodina from St Petersburg; and the German director Georg Genoux.

The following productions were shown in Moscow: Ravenhill's Shopping and F∗∗∗ing, directed by Olga Subbotina at the Kazantsev-Roshchin Centre for Drama and Directing (1999) and published in the same year in a translation by Alexander Rodionov; Some Explicit Polaroids was staged by Kirill Serebrennikov on the small stage of the Pushkin Theatre (2002); Patrick Marber's Closer was shown on tour in Moscow in the Royal National Theatre's production (1999); Sarah Kane's Psychosis 4.48 was shown at the NET (New European Theatre) festival in 2003 in the production of the Variety (Rozmaitosci) Theatre, Warsaw; and the plays of Martin McDonagh are in repertoire at the Vakhtangov Theatre, the Meyerhold Centre the Moscow Art Theatre and the Satirikon Theatre in Moscow, as well as several provincial theatres.

The name chosen for the theatre is interesting: teatr.doc, using a file extension that links the theatre to the Internet and digital publication media, connecting it to a culture that brought forth blogs and Live Journals, strengthening the individual's contribution to the making of news, and taking over this function from the central media. It is also worth noting in this respect the emphasis on oral traditions (especially recording), which brings news back to, or closer to, the people.

Sierz, In-Yer-Face-Theatre, pp. 4–5.

Mikhail Ugarov, ‘Nuzhno otrazhat’ zhizn’ takoi, kak ona est’!’, interview with Ol'ga Petrushanskaia, Sovremennaia dramaturgiia, 2 (2005), 185–87 (p. 186).

Zabaluev and Zenzinov, ‘Vremia verbatima’, p. 203.

Jesús Martin-Barbero, Communication, Culture and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations (London, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993).

The term ‘ecolect’ (eco: Greek oikos = house), referring to the language shared not by a social group but by a household, allows more subtle differentiation of groups than ‘sociolect’, which also bears upon class belonging.

Marcel Hénoff, Sade: The Invention of the Libertine Body (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 80.

Anatoli Vassiliev, Sept ou huit leçons de théâtre (Paris: POL, 1999); Polina Bogdanova, Logika peremen: Anatolii Vasil'ev mezhdu proshlym i budushchim (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2007).

Zabaluev and Zenzinov, ‘Vremia verbatima’, p. 205.

Lev Gudkov, ‘Ideologema “vraga”’ in Negativnaia identichnost’ (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2004), pp. 552–649.

Other plays of this type include: Olga Darfi's Sober PR; Nord-Ost: the 41st Day by Grigori Zaslavsky (a memorial evening with victims of the siege of the Dubrovka Theatre); Ekaterina Narshi's Immersion (verbatim based on interviews with women, whose relatives perished on the Kursk submarine); and Putin.doc by Victor Teterin, which also gave the title to a collection of plays published in 2005 in Moscow by Korova Press.

All references to the version of the play published on the ‘Novaya Drama’ site: <http://www.newdramafest.ru/plays.php[accessed 17 February 2007].

Vladimir Zabaluev and Aleksei Zenzinov, ‘Mezhdu andergroundom i meinstrimom’, Apologiia 7 (2005). <http://www.journal-apologia.ru/rnews.html?id=342&id_issue=101> [accessed 10 September 2007].

Lev Gudkov, Negativnaia identichnost': Stat'i 1997–2002 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2004), pp. 271–72.

Gudkov, ‘Ideologema “vraga”’, pp. 552–649.

Susan Suleiman, ‘The Politics of Postmodernism after the Wall,’ in International Postmodernism: Theory and Practice, ed. by Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publications, 1997), pp. 51–64 (p. 63).