The Theater of Labor: On the Critical Potential of Proizvodstvennaia Drama, Then and Now

• In Event: New Perspectives on Russian Theater and Performing Arts IV: The Aesthetics and Politics of Capitalism: People, Money, and Labor in Russian Theater

Abstract

This paper explores the dramatic genre of ‘proizvodstvennaia drama’ – industrial, or factory drama – in the historical context of its rise to prominence in the Soviet theater of the 1970s, and in its post-Soviet return to stage in the 2010s in productions of Teatr Truda (Theater of Labor) workshop in Moscow. Specifically, the paper examines the plays by Soviet authors Gennadii Bokarev and Georgii Vladimov, and highlights the critical potential of the genre vis-a-vis representation of working conditions, economic reality, and the figure of laborer as an agent of political and social change.

Author

• Natalia Plagmann, U of Colorado at Boulder