New Drama in Russian: Performance, Politics and Protest in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus by Curtis J. A. E. (review)

SEER, 99, 2, APRIL 2021 360 treatment of the cartoons. Moreover, rather than being analysed, the films are mostly delineated by plot details and only a few general aesthetic characteristics. Instead of a conclusion, the book presents a chronological table of selected political events, Western animation and Eastern Bloc animation. This chronology serves as a useful tool for locating the films in time and reorganizing the contextual information in a linear way. The chronology is accompanied by a map of Europe showing the division of the countries before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The map would presumably be valuable for students, especially non-European, unfamiliar with the geography of the region, and perhaps it would have sufficed to portray each country’s location visually in this way without the superfluous descriptions at the beginning of each chapter. Lastly, the reader might wish to know the method Cowen used to choose the films featured in the book. Most of them are unquestionably representative of some of the tendencies in each country, but the selection criteria adopted are not made clear. In the first part, Cowen selects only a few films that illustrate the main stances of the two sides of the Iron Curtain, while many other propaganda films go unmentioned. The same can be said for the discussion of animation in each country; quite a few influential masters are neglected and important films ignored. However, the book does not claim to offer a comprehensive study of Eastern Bloc animation, nor a thorough analysis of animated film production and issues of representation in the context of the Cold War. As suggested on the cover, this book should be approached as a guide, which aims to provide readers with glimpses of the films created in the nations to the east of the Iron Curtain and to arouse their curiosity in a region of the world that is still understudied in the English language. It also fulfils the important task of raising awareness of the need for the preservation, digitalization and distribution of significant but forgotten films. Toronto Laura Pontieri Curtis, J. A. E. (ed.). New Drama in Russian: Performance, Politics and Protest in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Library of Modern Russia, Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2020. xiv + 276 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £85.00. Consisting of eighteen contributions by fourteen specialists most of whom are based in the United States and Great Britain while others are in France, Russia, Italy and Belarus, this compilation arose out of a series of workshops on contemporary Russian-language drama held at Wolfson College, Oxford in April 2017. Eight of the contributions deal with the theatrical situation in Russia, three of which consist of recorded conversations with contemporary REVIEWS 361 practitioners, while six focus on Ukraine and four on Belarus, which also include recorded interviews with practising dramatists. The whole has been expertly edited by Professor Julie Curtis who provides an introduction and a conclusion as well as acting as interviewer and translator. As the editor explains in her introduction, the so-called ‘New Drama’ is a post-Soviet, twenty-first-century phenomenon of an essentially apolitical nature despite being an obvious reaction against social and political trends in the countries concerned. It seeks, among other things, to use ‘verbatim or documentary texts to give voice to ordinary citizens’ deploying ‘an unabashed frankness in using the vernacular language of everyday speech, including obscenities and many non-standard usages’ plus ‘a remarkable fearlessness in tackling taboo themes such as homosexuality and gender identity issues, youth disaffection, the Orthodox Church and blasphemy’ (p. 3). All contributions to the volume are of interest and exceptionally well written. A disadvantage for the general reader is that many of the essays deal with eyewitness accounts of live performances, some of which can be accessed via video links but whose essential quality can only be determined by live presence at their enactment. From a British viewpoint, it is interesting to note the practical influence of activities associated with London’s Royal Court Theatre and the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as well as the impact of so-called ‘in-yer-face’ dramatists such as the late Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, the...

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