Mikhail Durnenkov – The Russian Reader

Mihkel Ram Tamm (center) was a guru for hippies in Estonia and other parts of the Soviet Union. Courtesy of Vladimir Wiedemann and the Guardian

Reading of Durnenkov Play Banned in Vladivostok
Vitalia Bob
Teatr
September 1, 2021

A reading of Mikhail Durnenkov’s play How Estonian Hippies Destroyed the Soviet Union at the Primorsky Youth Theater [in Vladivostok] has been banned [sic].

The Primorsky Youth Theater’s new season was to open on September. The theater had announced this event a long time ago: it was planned for the theater’s courtyard and featured a reading of Mikhail Durnenkov’s play How Estonian Hippies Destroyed the Soviet Union. According to Maritime Territory media, yesterday, August 31, on the eve of the Russian president’s visit to Vladivostok, the management of the Youth Theater was forced to cancel the reading of the play and all events scheduled for September 2 after getting a call from the Maritime Territory Ministry of Culture and Archives.

Sergei Matlin, former head of the regional department of culture, commented on the reading’s cancellation on social media.

“It’s disgusting. This, by the way, is exactly what is meant by vicarious embarrassment. That is, when someone else does something, but for some reason you feel ashamed… The ministry actually doesn’t have the right to ban the reading of the play. Since this production definitely doesn’t qualify as a state commission, that means it is not financed from the budget. In any case, even if there were some controversial aspects about the text of the play, this is a creative issue and should definitely not be solved in the offices of bureaucrats. What has happened sets a dangerous precedent. If we do not fight back today, then tomorrow officials will want to veil nude pictures in a gallery, the day after tomorrow — to edit the wording of signage they don’t like in a museum exposition, and a couple of days later — to alter the costumes of characters at the Puppet Theater,” Matlin wrote.

Matlin also noted that Durnenkov’s play is currently being staged at the Meyerhold Center in Moscow with financing from the Presidential Grants Fund.

Lydia Vasilenko, the Youth Theater’s artistic director, declined to comment, but wrote on her Facebook page, “I’m having a hard time, a really hard time. Today, the reading of the Durnenkov play has been canceled. I’m at a loss.”

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How Estonian Hippies Destroyed the Soviet Union is a tragicomedy about the adventures of six Estonian hippies who are hungry for freedom and love. Despite the fact that the reading was canceled in Vladivostok, the play, produced with money from a presidential grant, is currently running at the Meyerhold Center in Moscow.

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly expressed regret about the collapse of the Soviet Union, calling it “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” He touched on this topic at his meeting with schoolchildren yesterday.

Source: Radio Svoboda

Translated by the Russian Reader

The play most suited to a large stage would have to be Mikhail Durnenkov’s How Estonian Hippies Destroyed the Soviet Union, which was written on commission for a theatre in Estonia. It is a dream-like psychedelic journey where reality and the imaginary become entangled, only disentangling at the play’s denouement, when it becomes clear that while the eponymous Estonian hippies may be forced to physically submit to the will of authority, it is their ideals of love and freedom that ultimately collapse the Soviet project from within, at the level of the individual.

— Alex Trustrum Thomas, “Moscow’s 2018 Liubimovka Festival: New Trends, Old Problems,” The Theatre Times, 12 October 2018

Flowers and hair grow everywhere! A wild flower power ride on the footprints of the Soviet hippie movement take you into the psychedelic underground of 1970s. In search of freedom and happiness under the thumb of the strict political regime a colorful crowd of artists, musicians, freaks, vagabonds and other long-haired drop-outs created their own System in the Soviet Union. Years later, a group of eccentric hippies take a road journey to Moscow where people still gather annually on the 1st of June to commemorate a tragic event in 1971, when thousands of hippies were arrested by the KGB. Directed by Terje Toomistu.

drama

Maksim Hanukai
Facebook
August 13, 2019

I am very excited to announce the publication of New Russian Drama: An Anthology. The volume features 10 plays (or “texts”) by contemporary playwrights writing in Russian. It is framed by an Introduction by myself and Susanna Weygandt and what I think will be a somewhat controversial Foreword by the eminent Richard Schechner.

Enormous thanks to everyone who contributed to this project: Susanna Weygandt, Ania Aizman, Thomas Campbell, Kira Rose, Sasha Dugdale, Christine Dunbar, Christian Winting, Richard Schechner and, last but not least, the playwrights! Also major thanks to Boris Wolfson, Julie Curtis, Duska Radosavljevic, and Christian Parker for their very generous blurbs.

I include the Table of Contents and a link to the official book site. According to Columbia University Press, customers in the United States, Canada, and most of Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia can receive a 30% discount off the price of the book by using the promo code CUP30 on the CUP website. Customers in the United Kingdom, Europe, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and South Africa should contact CUP’s distributor John Wiley & Sons to order the book and for information regarding price and shipping cost. Of course, the anthology is also available from other booksellers on- and offline.

Please help spread the news and consider teaching or staging these wonderful plays in your courses and theaters (or vice versa)!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword, by Richard Schechner
Introduction by Maksim Hanukai and Susanna Weygandt
A Chronology of New Russian Drama
1. Plasticine, by Vassily Sigarev
2. Playing the Victim, by the Presnyakov Brothers
3. September.doc, by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov
4. The Brothers Ch., by Elena Gremina
5. The Blue Machinist, by Mikhail Durnenkov
6. The Locked Door, by Pavel Pryazhko
7. The Soldier, by Pavel Pryazhko
8. Summer Wasps Sting in November, Too, by Ivan Vyrypaev
9. Somnambulism, by Yaroslava Pulinovich
10. Project SWAN, by Andrey Rodionov and Ekaterina Troepolskaya
Notes
About the Authors

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New Russian Drama took shape at the turn of the new millennium—a time of turbulent social change in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Emerging from small playwriting festivals, provincial theaters, and converted basements, it evolved into a major artistic movement that startled audiences with hypernaturalistic portrayals of sex and violence, daring use of non-normative language, and thrilling experiments with genre and form. The movement’s commitment to investigating contemporary reality helped revitalize Russian theater. It also provoked confrontations with traditionalists in society and places of power, making theater once again Russia’s most politicized art form.

This anthology offers an introduction to New Russian Drama through plays that illustrate the versatility and global relevance of this exciting movement. Many of them address pressing social issues, such as ethnic tensions and political disillusionment; others engage with Russia’s rich cultural legacy by reimagining traditional genres and canons. Among them are a family drama about Anton Chekhov, a modern production play in which factory workers compose haiku, and a satirical verse play about the treatment of migrant workers, as well a documentary play about a terrorist school siege and a post-dramatic “text” that is only two sentences long. Both politically and aesthetically uncompromising, they chart new paths for performance in the twenty-first century. Acquainting English-language readers with these vital works, New Russian Drama challenges us to reflect on the status and mission of the theater.

Source: Columbia University Press