This study aims to analyze the narrative structure and the narrator-character's feature of Ivan Vyrypayev's drama as a part of a wide-ranging attempt to explain characteristics of Novaya drama, which has at its core the problem of the construction of ...
This study aims to analyze the narrative structure and the narrator-character's feature of Ivan Vyrypayev's drama as a part of a wide-ranging attempt to explain characteristics of Novaya drama, which has at its core the problem of the construction of the narrative self and restoration of identity.
Vyrypayev's early plays, including <Oxygen>, <Genesis No.2>, and <July>, represent the mental wanderings of modern people through the provocative subjects, intermittent scene changes, and the narrator-character's fast rap-text. The mental world of a schizophrenic narrator-character cannot be penetrated by others. In his later works, in the case of <Delhi Dance>, <Illusions>, <The Drunks>, <Unbearably Long Embrace>, and <Solar Line>, the composition of the characters, the subject matter, and the situation begin to take on an ordinary, usual feature, while at the same time, relationships with others and their inability to communicate are presented as main topics. However, Vyrypayev does not end the situations with the inability to communicate, commonly referred to as Chekhov’s. Their dialogs are not a successful communication, but the feelings of unfulfillment and emptiness of each character rather highlights their sense of belonging and identity. Because of this, the storytelling event itself (a storytelling as an event) in which the characters meet and talk together becomes more important than the contents of the stories(events in the story). For Vyrypayev, words are not the means to describe reality, but reality itself, and the space that most clearly shows the reality of these words is the theatre. Accordingly, the narrator-characters of Vyrypayev’s recent works, <UFO>, <Interview S_FBP 4408>, and <Iran Conference> are composed of characters such as interviewers, interviewees, and conference attendees, so that the theater is presented as a place for contemporary encounters that includes the audience.
Viripayev’s insight that modern audiences come to the theater not to see Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but to listen to the stories of their contemporary writers and actors, awakens the perception of the essence of the theatre that should not be forgotten in the feast of various media.