Date: 17.03.2014

On March 11th the Reader’s Museum presented the new issue of “Sovremennaya Dramaturgiya” (#1, 2014). The magazine publishes new plays by Russian playwrights and translations of plays by foreign authors, topical materials concerning dramaturgy and theatre. The presentation was lead by Andrey Volchanskiy, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, and Rodion Beletskiy, the chairman of the meeting who is heading the magazine’s Drama Department. The guest speakers of the present meeting were playwrights Victor Kalitvyanskiy and Sergey Ivanov.

Victor Kalitvyanskiy is a well-known novelist and playwright, the winner of various drama contests. His play “Vozchik” became one of the best plays of 2009 (“Best Plays, 2009” collection, Livebook/Gayatri, 2010). His another play “Utechka” (“Leak”) got a Grand Prix at the International Drama Contest “Free Theatre – 2010” (Minsk, Belarus) and his recent play “Inspektsiya” (“Inspection”), published in the new issue of “Sovremennaya Dramaturgiya”, became second in the Annual All-Russian Drama Contest “Dramatis personae” (2013). The scene of the “Inspektsiya” play is laid in 1939 in the USSR where the lead character is an NKVD member visiting labor camps with inspections. One of the strands to the plot is a love story.

Sergey Iv. Ivanov is a radio-drama playwright, author of books for children, Literature Contest winner at “Dar-2011” Festival. His one-act play for two actors “Novaya Rabota” (“New Work”) published in the new issue of “Sovremennaya Dramaturgiya” is a satirical play where a husband and a wife who spent all their life together happen to discover each other at a new angle within just an hour and a half.

The new issue of “Sovremennaya Dramaturgiya” also includes plays written by Russian authors Maria Zelinskaya, Maria Ogneva, Yuriy Polyakov, Alexander Stroganov and the magazine’s debutant Maxim Chernysh with his play “Pustota” (“Emptiness”). The Section “Foreign Playwriting” presents the comedy by Alessandro Casola “Vzyatka po-neopolitansky” (“Neapolitan Style Bribe”) and the “Critique” Section is rich with varios interesting materials.

In the Section “History. Bibliography” you can find three plays by Valery Bryusov who can be compared to A.N. Ostrovskiy by the number of plays written. The interesting fact is that one of those three plays, “Piroent”, describing an interplanetary spaceship building, had been finished by Bryusov in 1916, which was almost 10 years before Aleksey Tolstoy touched upon the same subject in his novel “Aelita” (1927).

The meeting had a traditionally warm and amicable atmosphere where the authors answered many interesting questions. At the end of the meeting the guest playwrights presented our Library with their signed books.

We would like to express our gratitude to all who took part in the event and hope you had a nice time in our Library!

We are looking forward to seeing you again!

Rodion Beletskiy, Head of the Drama Department, “Sovremennaya Dramaturgiya”

Andrey Volchanskiy, Editor-in-Chief, “Sovremennaya Dramaturgiya”

Sergey Ivanov and Victor Kalitvyanskiy