„New drama” and (new) spirituality. The problem of spiritual quests in Russian and Belarusian drama of the 21st century (with examples from selected works)

Abstract

Contemporary Russian-language “new drama" (both Russian and Belarusian) is most often identified with plays performed using verbatim-theatre techniques, and with works of a documentary character that feature hyper-realistic, naturalistic or Neo-Brutalist elements. However, this is not the only distinctive tendency in the poetics of contemporary Eastern Slavic drama. There exists a completely different, metaphorical and philosophical current of evolution of „new drama". The present article is devoted to the concept of spirituality in new Russian (Ivan Vyrypayev, Vasiliy Sigarev) and Belarusian (Diana Balyko, Pavel Priazhko, Andrey Kureychik) drama, as it explores the sacral and spiritual elements in the latter and attempts to unveil the deeper meaning of several selected works. The author wishes to evaluate how spiritual issues are depicted, and to what modifications the presentation of these issues is subject to. Due to the obvious anthropological character of the works analyzed, where the human being and its spiritual queries become a semantic carrier, the literary character constitutes a primary analytical category in itself. The article is an attempt to analyze and interpret religious and spiritual elements in works that may sometimes not be perceived as a manifestation of faith. The article draws attention to the use of motifs known from the Christian cultural sphere and to the referencing and modernization of old Ruthenian  anthropological types (such as strannik, yurodivy). The author showcases how contemporary Russian and Belarusian playwrights depict the human being as a spiritual seeker, as they address both the sacred and the secularized understanding of spirituality.