Russia, Show Us Your Classics!
source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/mar/31/classic-russian-theatre-gogol-bulgakov
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- St_Alia_10191
- added this
"If Russia is worried about its identity abroad, it could spend less time on the defensive and more time promoting its rich cultural heritage. There is a vast multitude of "lost" Russian classics. Not lost to Russians, but lost to the west – or, to put it another way, ripe for rediscovery. We know about Chekhov; the occasional Gorky or Ostrovsky makes it to British stages. But only a select few plays by these writers are ever staged in the UK: Ostrovsky was writing prolifically for over 40 years, but British audiences usually only see The Storm, flippantly omitting all of his other work.
What is remarkable about the Russian classics, other than the sheer quantity of them, is the vast difference of style. While Russian playwriting only spans a short period – some 200 years – the writing is surprisingly varied. This isn't just a question of genre: Russian classics were responding to shifting political systems. So the fundamentals of playwriting were also changing: who the plays were written for and why they were written."
What is remarkable about the Russian classics, other than the sheer quantity of them, is the vast difference of style. While Russian playwriting only spans a short period – some 200 years – the writing is surprisingly varied. This isn't just a question of genre: Russian classics were responding to shifting political systems. So the fundamentals of playwriting were also changing: who the plays were written for and why they were written."
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- groups:
- Culture, Art and Style
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- tags:
- Culture, Art and Style, Russia, Literature, 8 more
