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Soul Searching And Stirring up The Russian CanonContemporary Russian Drama in Baltic Circle’s Public ReadingThe Baltic Circle Public Readings come to a conclusion with three Russian plays on Friday 28th Nov. Russia is experiencing a theatrical boom again, a new golden age of Russian drama has emerged. Hundreds of new scripts for stage are produced every year and many of them find their way to the western audiences through theatre festivals in central Europe. However, for some reason these new Russian plays do not seem to find their way to Finland so easily, and perhaps the journey through Germany is indeed too long. Writer Vladimir Sorokin has raised controversy and resentment among president Putin’s supporters, and certainly does not write sterile, well-behaved drama. Neither does he tear open his own persona in his plays and tell the audience the true story of his life. Sorokin is definitely more of a shocker who stirs the system and pulls down statues. In his play Dostoyevsky Trip he imitates genres of Russian literary history with great virtuosity. By stirring and breaking the national literary canon’s mythic, almost sacred constructions, Sorokin rewrites Russian cultural history. "There are more false gods than life’s realities in this world". Quite a contrast to Trip’s literary world can be found in the Ukrainian born Klim’s existentialist monologue I.He. not I and I.(Minä.Hän. en Minä ja Minä.) In this play an actor has set himself the task of escaping from the prison of his own lack of talent by creating a new, genuine connection to his self and to language. Where Sorokin feels no shame at destroying the meanings of language, Klim’s poetic text is trying to find a way back to the genuine but long lost contact to the soul. And with full sincerity. As an addition to these two literary plays, Friday’s Public Reading also presents Vladimir and Oleg Presnjakov’s Terrorism (Terrorismi). This play gained unexpected success in Moscow last year as it turned out to be frighteningly contemporary; the play was premiered a week after the terrorist attack on the Dubrovka theatre. Terrorism explores both physical and psychological terror very sensitively in a world which is built upon fear. In a world where a spark can spread into a wildfire at any time, anywhere.
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