Description
‘Noah Birksted-Breen’s Sputnik Theatre has been a leader in bringing cutting-edge Russian drama to the English-speaking world for years now. This collection of important recent Russian plays is proof of that hard work, but it is also a great tool for the future. Theatres, directors, actors: five stageworthy plays are now in your hands.’ John Freedman, Moscow Times
The five plays collected here represent some of the most successful experiments in playwriting from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, since the year 2000. In their formal and thematic range – from poetic drama to futuristic satire – they deftly take the temperature of life in the Russian region today, offering vivid and often dark snapshots of dissidence and activism in the face of political corruption and widespread social stagnation.
The collection includes:Yuri Klavdiev’s Slow Sword (New Drama Award, Moscow, 2007)Natalia Koliada’s DreamsMaksim Kurochkin’s Tityus The Irreproachable (New Drama Award, Moscow, 2008)Natalia Moshina’s Techniques of Breathing in an Airlocked SpaceVladimir Zuev’s Mums (Eurasia Award, Ekaterinburg, 2007)
‘A girl dies defiantly of cancer; students wrangle over a farcically amoral economics project; an ageing actress endlessly replays the dismally perfumed story of her life in her dressing room. It’s far from cheering stuff, but there’s a blissful lack of bitterness to Moshina’s writing, and her dialogue shifts mischievously between profound musings on God and his apparent disinterest in capitalism, to flippant, sardonic one-liners.’ Time Out on Techniques of Breathing in an Airlocked SpacèSputnik Theatre Company, winner of multiple Time Out Critics’ Choices and a Metro Critics’ Choice, has selected these five dramas from among hundreds of new Russian-language plays. Sputnik has translated and produced them for British audiences between 2005 and 2010 at some of the UK’s top new writing venues, including Soho Theatre. Reviews and more info at www.sputniktheatre.co.uk
