The New Drama Festival is back with us again for the fifth year running. As usual, it promises to be a beggars' banquet, a roiling, churning roller coaster of talk, readings, music, performances and more talk.
Activities begin each morning with 90-minute discussions under the general heading of Heroes. Day events, including readings, seminars and video showings, are designated as Experiments. Evenings are devoted to performances, while concerts, poetry readings or cabaret performances are on tap each night around 10 or 11 p.m.
A quick glance at the program reveals a few trends worth noting. One is the growing prevalence of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh on Russian stages. There will be three performances of McDonagh plays during the festival, which opens Friday at the Praktika Theater and the Meyerhold Center and concludes at Praktika on September 24. Another noteworthy aspect is the increasing presence of what is called the Tolyatti phenomenon in the affairs of Russian drama. A quartet of Tolyatti playwrights -- Yury Klavdiyev, Mikhail Durnenkov, Vyacheslav Durnenkov and Vadim Levanov -- will be featured in various ways throughout the festival.
And then there is a sense of nostalgia or, at least, of stock-taking that comes with new performances of plays that have made some contribution to the notion of new drama in the past. These include Alexander Vartanov's "Great Troughing," Ivan Vyrypayev's "Dreams" and Vasily Sigarev's "Plasticine." Sigarev's hard-hitting drama about a schoolboy encountering violence and indifference is considered one of the works that gave a kick-start to the concept of new drama when it first appeared in 2001.
McDonagh was introduced to Russia by Sergei Fedotov in Perm. Fedotov, whose small Theater U Mosta has been in existence for 15 years, has said he was exclusively interested in the classics until he ran across McDonagh's darkly comic plays. He has produced several now, and the festival will feature "The Skull of Connemara" and "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" on Monday at Praktika. Fedotov's take on the rage, despair and devastating irony that swirl through the plays' undercurrents is appropriately stoic and understated. A second rendition of "Beauty Queen" will be offered by the Vakhtangov Theater on Sept. 23. This is a new production staged by Mikhail Bychkov of Voronezh with the popular actress Yulia Rutberg.
The festival opens Friday at the Meyerhold Center with two performances of Richard Maxwell's Obie-winning play "Drummer Wanted". Dubbed a "personal injury lawsuit musical" by one critic after it opened in a production by the New York City Players in 2001, this two-actor performance piece traces the story of an injured and immobilized musician waiting at home for an accident insurance case to be resolved while his mother acts as his caretaker. The mother and son rarely are able to find common ground, even when they burst into song.
The topic of music and drama will be treated, both theoretically and in practical terms, by the director, actor and composer Vladimir Pankov. He leads a discussion about his own self-proclaimed genre of "soundrama" on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at Praktika and presents two recent productions. His staging of Yelena Isayeva's "Doc.tor", a curious mix of music and black humor that tells the story of a doctor in the Russian provinces, is performed Wednesday at Teatr.doc. Pankov's latest production, "Passage," is a musical dramatic piece produced in conjunction with the Playwright and Director Center. It plays Sept. 22 at the Theater Yunogo Zritelya.
The innovative St. Petersburg director Andrei Moguchy, whose street-theater, circus-style production of "Krakatuk" continues its run at the Kolomenskoye Estate Museum through Oct. 1, will also lend thought and deed to the festival. His staging of Vladimir Sorokin's "Not Hamlet", produced by the Priyut Komedianta Theater of St. Petersburg, is on tap Wednesday and Thursday at the Meyerhold Center. On Thursday at 11:30 a.m. he speaks at Praktika on the subject of "non-plays".
Several of the festival's productions are familiar to Moscow theater-goers. Most of these are drawn from the repertoire of the Praktika Theater and Teatr.doc, the chief organizers of the festival. Praktika offers Vyacheslav Durnenkov's "Three Acts on Four Paintings" on Sunday and Viktoria Nikiforova's "Play About Money" on Sept. 24. Teatr.doc presents a trio of works, including the previously mentioned "Doc.tor." Nina Belenitskaya and Ivan Ugarov's "Democracy.doc," playing Saturday, combines elements of a television talk show and a group therapy session in an audience-participation piece where spectators are called upon to embody and enact various social roles. Ruslan Malikov and Nikita Denisov's "Manager", an expose of Russian office workers, plays Monday.
Several smaller Russian cities make contributions to the festival program. The Fantastic Reality Theater from Syktyvkar performs Sarah Kane's "Psychosis 4:48" on Tuesday. Tatyana Frolova's "My Mama", as performed by the KnAM Theater of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, plays Thursday. Both are hosted by Teatr.doc. Sigarev's "Plasticine", as directed by Sergei Potapov for the State Theater of Humor and Satire from Yakutsk, is slated for Sept. 22 at the Meyerhold Center.
A curiosity of the festival should be the open dress rehearsal of Ivan Vyrypayev's latest play, "July". This joint production of Praktika and Kislorod Movement opens at Praktika in October, but will be on display Thursday. It stars Vyrypayev's wife, Polina Agureyeva, one of the best young actresses in Moscow.
And that, folks, is not all. New Drama traditionally promises a near nonstop program of thrills, spills and chills. There is no reason to think it won't deliver again this year.
The New Drama Festival opens Fri. and runs to Sept. 24 at various venues.
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