Russia in the Mirror of Contemporary Dramatic Works – Collage of Image

Abstract

This paper attempts to reconstruct the image of present-day Russia, as presented in the contemporary Russian theatre. Combining isolated fragments of new post-perestroika reality into a cohesive whole: the social status of the intelligentsia, of ordinary people, young people and senior citizens and problems of settling accounts with the Communist past and the Chechen war, which have been scattered throughout individual dramatic works, makes it possible to show the author’s appraisal of the social changes. These are expressed through the employment of such metaphorical words and phrases as ‘madhouse / loony bin’, [a right] ‘farce’, [totally] ‘chaotic’, ‘new broom sweeps clean’ etc.

The object of scientific reflection is also the ways of artistic realization of the image of Russia. The various means of artistic expression employed in the ‘new drama’: modifications of genre and time-space modifications, historical figures and simulacra, various stylistic means, like irony and grotesque, rhetorical figures, notional metaphors; and finally, inter-textual quotations and references taken from a vast store of pop culture and the language of mass media impart a collage-like atmosphere to the image, which allude through its aesthetics to the theatre of absurd.