Reality Performance: Documentary Trends in Post-Soviet Russian Theatre

This article sets out to analyse a particular development in recent Russian drama and theatre: documentarism. This phenomenon is placed into a socio-political and cultural context in order to identify its positioning towards postmodernism. The particular features of the documentary theatre and the verbatim technique it employs are analysed in the work of teatr.doc and the playwrights that surround this off-theatre. The themes of teatr.doc are identified, as is the device of the ecolect used to characterize particular marginal social groups in each of the productions and plays. This approach is discussed in depth with reference to September.doc by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov, a play using blogs about the Beslan tragedy to address issues of ethnic conflicts, in order to explore through the text established notions of Russian patriotism and terrorism.