 Shishin Literary Director of Omsk's Fifth Theater. So I'll begin by asking Dave, we had a fantastic talk back last night, which centered around Dave's essay, Adam Smashing Playwright. And that was about the works of Klovdiev. And I wanted to, Dave, would you favor us with a few points from that essay? Sure. You know, one of the things after I first encountered Yuri Klovdiev in 2008 in Slovakia when I was at a festival, John Friedman had curated the Focus Russia portion of the Nova Drama Festival that was there. And I walked into a theater not knowing what I was going to see. I didn't speak a lick of Russian. And I saw a production of Iron Machine Gunner and was absolutely floored by this work. Kind of the same way where you may be able to listen to John Coltrane for the first time you ever heard him and totally superseded all language. And it was one of the first experiences of my life when I realized that theater can live in another level beyond understanding. And so that night, I talked to John a little bit about the piece. And I said, I think I know what this play is about, but I don't know. Can you tell me about it? And John said, well, you want to see a translation? And a week later, we had one. And a week after that, we went into rehearsals. So it was a really exciting journey. And on that journey, I've encountered a lot of Klovdiev's work. And what I realized in looking at them, one of the commonalities of them, goes to the word bad ass. And when I say that, I'm not necessarily just talking about the attitude of the work. It's uncompromising nature. But I'm talking about the idea of two words being slammed together to create another word. And I find that Klovdiev's work, Klovdiev, what he's doing across many, if not most, if not all of his pieces, is taking two diverse genres and smashing them together to come up with a new way of telling a story. His plays really defy simple descriptions. I would say, I am the machine gunner is kind of like Grand Theft Auto Meets Saving Private Riot. Martial Arts is kind of Rista Terabethia meets Pulp Fiction. So he's taking these things that we know, childhood and drug dealing and smashing them together in this way that kind of creates a fantastical reality that really drags us in his audience members. So that's a little bit of what I've observed. And if you go through his docu-drama, the polar truth, you wind up seeing him kind of smashing docu-drama up against some very rich storytelling and how he managed to capture the me-you of people with HIV within that play and capturing that with real tenderness as well as real rebellion. And so kind of, as I think about Klovdiev's work, I really do consider him to be an atom-smashing playwright where it is these two things coming together. And we coined the term while we were working on Machine Gunner of the aesthetics of badass. And in some ways, I feel like Klovdiev is really kind of working within that kind of uncompromising, intimidating work that is intimidating not just for you out there as audience members, but also as an artist beginning to tackle it. He leaves so much freedom within this work. I'm the Machine Gunner is one block of text and Graham figured out, okay, this is who speaking when he leaves that up to you, which requires, as an artist, a hell of a lot of effort because he's not giving it to you. We're really used to, in American theater, I think having things prescribed to us. And Klovdiev gives you these very loose blueprints and I've seen productions of I'm a Machine Gunner that are one person. I was in Moscow and went to see a production that was nine people. So it can really be blown apart in all of these different ways. That would be helpful. Right, eight other people. So, yeah. When you were figuring out all this. So that's a few thoughts kind of on your Klovdiev and kind of the me you that I see him working out of in kind of an overview of his work. Yeah. Thank you, Dave. And something that you had mentioned about there are different productions that have gone on in Moscow, Klovdiev's work. It seems like Masha, this might be something you could speak to. I've seen several productions that were done with his play, Razvalimi. And I've been at the reading at Lubionko festival when the first, the martial arts were read. And it was, when it was read first time and we're going through all this like world that he creates and this kind of mystery and all this city folk, childish city folk that is used there. You kind of how you can make it on a stage. And what I've seen here in both productions in the Iron Machine Gunner and the Martial Arts. It's the brilliant piece of art and not in any U.S. play, theater you can find such a great work. And I want to congratulate Austin and the Breaking String and the Salvation Guard with that we've seen here. And that it is all happened. And first of all, thanks to you, Graham, that you had courage to do that. And I hope that some people who I hope seen that through the webcast that may be in Russia and some other places also appreciated it a lot. And I think that the Iron Machine Gunner is the really brilliant piece of theater and acting and design and just congratulations. What I love about Kiro Klavyev is that he's controversial. He's not very easy one to do and to work within the theatrical space and you need to think a lot. And I know that when we've been together in Moscow and we've seen the slow sword and when you were thinking about just doing the slow sword here, you decided not to do that. So it is not easy to work with Klavyev because he creates his own world. He has his own mythology, which he invents and builds. And each and every piece that he creates, he has his own mythology in. And I think that is his unique character. Maybe John will correct me, but I think so, yeah. Absolutely, thank you, Masha. And we'll have a chance to return to some of these points after trying to get some of the ideas on the table if I can start it yourself. Pavel, I wanted to turn to you, you're from Olmsk, which is a several-hour plane flight from Moscow out in Siberia. And I'm curious if you might talk some about new Russian drama or now I suppose it would be contemporary Russian drama in the provinces, how it's experienced, because a lot of it comes from the provinces, I understand. I mean, might you speak to that point? So I think that here in Austin you've got more Russian, new contemporary Russian drama than in provincial. No, that's true, that's true exactly. Because I travel quite a lot in Russia because I'm programming a third festival which held in Olmsk. So this is why I'm trying to say as many productions as possible, especially in the provinces, not in Moscow. And I should say that Moscow is very different from the other parts of Russia, even from St. Petersburg in a way. And for me, I should admit, well, although I am ashamed to admit, but I've seen these two productions, productions are these two plays for the first time here in Austin. I am the machine gunner, so it's my first time sitting stage in martial arts as well. Although, so a new Russian drama, contemporary Russian drama and contemporary Russian playwrights are not very popular outside of Moscow, unfortunately. And there are very many state-owned feet companies in Russia and about 400 feet is in the whole country. And I think you can, well, there are only about 10 or 20 companies who stage contemporary playwrights. And so I don't know why, maybe this is because of the uncomfortable nature of this playwriting because it deals with the issues that we Russians, especially far from Moscow, are not ready to face. Or trying to avoid somehow. And although this, as far as I see it, this concept is going away now because theater people believe that Russian audience do not need contemporary playwriting. And what we do in a laboratory format as when we present contemporary plays as stage readings, something, they attract lots of audience in provinces, in Omsko, Novosibirskoye, Krasnoyarsk. And I think that it will change in, well, maybe not in the nearest future, but maybe in five years' time. It will change and there will appear more and more productions based on contemporary playwriting. And I would like to mention what I call St. Petersburg Anomaly, well, because St. Petersburg was as much a provincial city as Omsk is now, I should say, theater-wise, I mean. The repertoire was quite traditional. There's obviously nobody from St. Petersburg here because if there was, they would have been throwing things at him. But he's right. Anyway, when you think, well, two years ago, say, when you were talking about St. Petersburg and about the repertoire of theaters in St. Petersburg, it was quite traditional. Light comedies or Russian classics, so 150 versions of Chekhov's Seagull in every theater. And that would be the repertoire of St. Petersburg theater. But nowadays, things are different and there are lots of young theater companies appearing in St. Petersburg, especially Etude Theater or On Theater, Laboratory On Theater. And they produce shows based on contemporary playwriting only. And Klovdiev, who lives in St. Petersburg, but, well, now appears on stage there. And there is a great production, I would say, of Razvalini, Masha mentioned that. Razvalini, it's translated into English. It means the ruins. It is the last name of a family, actually. And it tackles with even more uncomfortable issues than I am the machine gunner, probably, because it deals with the issue of cannibalism during the Second World War and the siege of Leningrad then. So, you know, and it is a shocking play, but it is somehow, it is a very, first of all, it is a very good production of it. And it is very popular in St. Petersburg now. You can't buy tickets for that show. You should buy them, well, a month in advance, at least, in order to get to that show, you know. So, St. Petersburg, unlike Moscow, it's very conservative city, but I think that St. Petersburg will be an example for Omsk or Yekaterinburg or for Novosibirsk and new contemporary Russian drama will appear there as well. So, I hope so. So, I think that there are very many, very many good playwrights nowadays in Russia. There are quite a number of them, but they belong to small spaces. Now, they're somewhere in Moscow and even smaller spaces in St. Petersburg. But, well, let's meet here in five year time. I don't know. Something has changed by then. Thank you so much, Pavel, for giving us kind of a global view of Russia in its entirety, all 11 of her time zones and new Russian dramas place in it. I wonder if we might zero in on Moscow since we have a gentleman here who's absolutely immersed in that particular scene, John, see several hundred productions a year. I want to swing out first before I come back to Moscow because an interesting thing, Pavel lives in Omsk. He's actually from Ekaterinburg. And it's really important to say that another real center for playwriting is in the city of Ekaterinburg, Pavel's hometown, where in fact you can see lots of contemporary plays because there is a playwright by the name of Nikolai Kalyada who has his own theater, who teaches playwriting there and who does a lot of productions of contemporary plays. And take some of them on tour from time to time. But the only other city really in the last 10, well, yeah, 10, 15, 20 years that has really had a concentrated number of writers outside of Moscow, new writers outside of Moscow has been Talyati, which is where Klovdiev is from. If any of you were here at the reading today of Trash, the author of that play is also from Talyati. But the interesting thing there is if Kalyada stays in Ekaterinburg and writes his plays and stages his plays, and most of Kalyada's students stay in Ekaterinburg and write their plays there, Vasily Sigurdyev, Alek Bogaev, Yaroslav Pulinovich, I realize that's alphabet soup, but those are all really big names in Russian drama, very big names in contemporary Russian drama. All of them have stayed in Ekaterinburg and continue to build and develop the art form in that city. Talyati, which produced several really fine writers, Klovdiev, two Doreninkov brothers, a guy by the name of Vadim Ivanov, it did not hold as a unique place that was capable of developing a school over a period of time. Klovdiev ended up going to St. Petersburg, as Pasha pointed out. Misha Doreninkov moved to Moscow, Vadim Ivanov unfortunately died of cancer as a very young man, 44 years old, a little over a year ago, and so there's just one of the major writers left there in Talyati, so Talyati never really, it's a major city, it produced several major writers, but it is not going to do that anymore. That's the Talyati phenomenon, as it was called, is now over, it's a part of history. Moscow tends to suck things in and bring people to it. There's lots of examples. I mean, again, I hesitate to throw alphabet soup at you, but believe me, we're talking about major writers when I say someone like Mikhail Ugarov, who founded theater doc and is a guru of contemporary Russian drama. Misha Ugarov is not from Moscow, he's from Arkhangelsk. Maxim Kuruchkin, who many of you know personally because Max has been here twice, Maxim Kuruchkin is not from Moscow, he's from Kiev, he comes to Moscow, and so Moscow is a place that gathers, that attracts like a magnet and provides opportunities for people to stay, grow, and produce new work, and of course the variety of things being done in Moscow is enormous, and if we talk about Kladyev and we talk about Kuruchkin or if we talk about Olga Muchina again, whom many of you may know because she was produced here two years ago, Graham staged her play, Flying, which I wanna point out is just out as a movie, came out about 15 days ago, Flying came out as a movie in Russia, and these are all, and Muchina was also, she was actually born in Moscow, she grew up outside of Moscow in return. These are all very different writers and Moscow is more than capable of having room for these people and giving them an opportunity to develop each in their own way. So the atmosphere there in the playwriting community is really extremely varied, and indeed I will just support what Pasha said, literally in the last two years, St. Petersburg has gone from being a zero on the map of contemporary writing to on a scale of 10 to maybe five or six already. I mean, you know, a huge leap thanks to this theater called On Theater, which has really invigorated the city and has created an interest in new plays and is going to continue on sure doing so. So it's one last thing. I would say that we are at a turning point in contemporary Russian drama because the writers who showed up began creating new styles, giving us new names, giving us new kinds of works, that is Maksim Kuritskin, that is Yuri Klovdiev, and the like, they are now, if you will, masters. They are now major writers, they are established writers, we know them, we trust them, we can trust them, we know that they're going to give us quality, we know what kind of quality that is, we know what kind of style it is, and their authority now is such that it's much harder for younger writers coming up behind them. Many of the younger writers for the last couple of years have looked like they are epigones, they have looked like they're copying, they have looked like they're using the models of these writers who we can now call masters, and it's been pretty hard for them to break through. I think we're beginning to see a few signs of another generation pushing up through, and indeed, maybe not even five years from now, maybe Pasha will have to come back in five years for the provinces to catch up, but I think maybe in three years in Moscow, we may see a whole other generation coming up, pushing up under Kuruchkin Kravyev and the likes. That's absolutely wonderful. I wonder if I might solicit reactions or reflections to some of these thoughts from the audience. Yes, sir. Yeah, I'm going to explore the idea here. That's a good thing to do. So how representative of contemporary Russian theater is Moscow and what makes it so controversial? I think those are pretty easy to answer. What makes it so controversial is incredible violence, cannibalism, the ruins, the play the ruins is was pretty shocking. Monotheist. I'm sorry? Monotheist. The monotheist. Extremely violent. What you saw here tonight is challenging. It's in your face. I think that's an easy one to answer. How, what's the word you use? How characteristic? Yeah, representative. Well, in the sense that he's pushing envelopes, in the sense that he's pushing an audience to go beyond their usual comfort zone, I think he's, I think all of the writers that we're talking about in this generation all try to do that in very different ways. Kurochkin tends to do that more intellectually, stylistically, confusing the audience, throwing them red herrings one after another, sending people off on wild goose chases, all kinds of stuff, that's all a matter. Whereas with Klovdiev it's like he's just coming right at you, like Joey Hood just comes right up to us and just like, that is Klovdiev, coming right at you. So it's not just social things, it's also, because it seems to me, again, as a total amateur, that Russians tend to worship their classics, like Chekhov, like you said, right? So is it also, I guess, social, in terms of not just rejecting the old way of writing plays, or you know, like Chekhov, right? Because like for example, you said that in the St. Petersburg there were 150 productions of Chekhov. That means that there's- Well, not $115. $75. No, no, no. No, no, no. That means that there's that much demand for that kind of stuff. And so by presenting, say the ugly side of contemporary Russian society, is that, by itself, controversial? Do you want to take that, Marcia? In a way, yes, because what was called a new drummer was formed as an answer to the completely becoming artificial theater, which sticked to the classical authors. And the young generation failed to believe in that, and just had no sense in what was happening on this stage, and they wanted to do something that they're really feeling true and right, and appealing. And what is important about Kravdyev is that this sense of the provincial Taliaty, the sense of this time between 90s and 2000s, and the amount of events, and violence, and destruction, and blood, what was happening in the country, and in Taliaty, in particular, because of businesses, crimes, and guns, and shooting in the streets, it was happening. And there were no articulation for that in the theater, in the art at all. And he just find the way to speak about what was bothering him. And it was kind of sincere way to do that. And there is, I believe, where his uniqueness is. Are there any productions of this with actual children playing for children? I mean, will that be possible? The martial arts had never been produced in Russia. There were only one reading during the festival of young playwright, young drummer, Lubimov Kovansk. The world premiere of that display took place in Baltimore, Towson University, two years ago? Three. Already three years ago. Three years ago, staged by Yuri Urnov. And the second production in the history of the world, just watched it. So in the middle of the 90s, when this new drummer trend started to be formed, there were several major centers. It was Moscow, it was Yekaterinburg, and it was Telyatyev when Vadim Ivanov, the major playwright, started gathering people around himself doing the festival, doing readings, bringing people from Moscow and from other places to read the plays and to create some vibe around that. And so appeared Durninkov Brothers, Klovdiv, Kira Malina, and some other authors who went, Kira now lives in Ukraine, Misha in Moscow, Yuriy in St. Petersburg, Slava Durninkov stayed in Telyatyev and he's doing some social work there and still writing, I believe. And what we're now witnessing is that these centers of why playwriting life is a bit switching, changing. Moscow stays as more political and now more socially engaged. Young writers are more willing to participate in the social project, in the applied theater, the what the theater dog does, or they try to find the new forms and do adaptations of the classics, what the Ugarov does with the center of drama and playwriting. Yekaterinburg encapsulates what they were doing, their trends and their mythology, their own mythology, also very dark one about apocalypse. It was like, believe that they are knowing about that a lot and they're writing about that, the cigarette, the Bagaev and Yaroslav Polinovich appeared like a very, very young voice and she's very popular now in Russia and she's staged all over the country in Yaroslav in so many different provincial theaters and that is like in the country what Paschus holds. So some playwrights, they are popular even in the province because even in the provincial cities where a new director came to the theater and he wants to change something, first thing that he tries to do is the new drama because it's like very, very new to what people think, people feel, what are the tips of fingers and yes. And now during the like past, maybe two Lubyumovka festivals, we're witnessing that they're appearing very interesting center in Minsk, for example, in Belorussia. Some playwrights are coming from there. They're writing in Russian, they're kind of Russian language playwrights and they're coming to Moscow because Moscow becoming a gate to any other theaters around the country and they can get their plays to be read, to be heard and then maybe get some future for like staging. I asked Dave, you were nodding your head. Yeah, well, as an American going over to something, there's a couple of things that I found really interesting in kind of the controversy and the things you're asking about this. I had the great pleasure of going to Lubyumovka which is the Young Playwrights Festival where Marshall Artaid is reading and saw something that I'd never see in the US which was in a room half this size, 120 people squeezing in, people propped up in window sills to hear readings of plays, people crammed out doorways to the point where I had a colleague who was like, I'm claustrophobic, I gotta get out of here. And there's this huge hunger for this writing among young people that I found remarkably encouraging. So, but as Pavel was bringing up, who's gonna pay the ticket price to come see the productions? And when we get into controversy, there was one thing that happened, correct me if my memory of this is wrong, but a number of these writers started writing for TV and started putting some of these issues into television episodes. And there was a television show, I believe called Schola that came out, Schola, which is school, right? And when- I was just translating a good rush out. Oh, okay, I'm working on it, I'm working on it. That's my job here, I love it. And when that came out and these things were put on TV because TV is that much more impactful, the series was, I think, wasn't it put on hold for a while or wasn't it canceled? Because this shouldn't be going to the mass. It's okay in the theater. Okay, that was a hug, just stop, I've got a thousand which is not what you want. That's great, there was actually one audience member that had a really powerful reaction. I got a chance to speak to it. I wanted to ask him to share his thoughts and experiences with Johnny Meyer. Johnny is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and a particularly powerful experience watching. I am the machine gunner. I wonder, Johnny, who might talk a bit about that. Well, first things, I just wanted to say thanks for everything for coming out. It's great to all the great institutional support and creative work that goes into bringing this to Austin. So thank you for that. And yeah, I am a machine gunner and both plays have a powerful effect on me and they're just beautifully done so congratulations to you all man. But I guess the effect that I had with a machine gunner was that for many of us, as Mr. White mentioned over the break, I think that many of us have grandparents that were in World War II as well. And I myself lost my grandfather, last veteran in my family besides me, I had just passed away over Christmas. But what's shocking and amazing about I'm a machine gunner is that here is an instance of a grandfather that's a veteran who's experienced so horrifying and so entrapping that the pathos of violence committed him, not only him, but his grandson and subsequent generations into that sort of psychology of violence trapped into those mechanisms and that Joey gave us tonight in those two characters. And it was an extraordinary thing to see here and it was wonderful to watch the narrative break and us as human beings, of course, are trying to put it back together again. I'm sure we all did, flawlessly. But it was extraordinary to watch that art come at us and see what we do with it. And what happens and what the trap that was set for both the characters of Joey was in it. That was extraordinary. So I just thanks to everybody for what an amazing, amazing thing to know that somebody's writing like that. It's one of those things where I play write myself, you don't want to write something like that, you're just goddamn glad somebody did. You realize that's gonna get quoted many, many, many times. Oh, it's so amazing. I mean, thank God, it's the kind of thing, it had an illy like song of the hubris and honor and the difference between the two and how they cross over. What's the difference between honoring your grandfather and catching on to the hubris that they never leave us there? And God, think of the, you can't help but think, what was it like for the wife, the grandmother, who had to live with that, or the children, or to your character who lived with them there? It was gorgeous. What a gorgeous piece of work. And both sides of life, I had a powerful experience to the other one too, but I think that I just had to speak about that. I'm sorry. This is great, my country. Thank you. I'll say thank you to Johnny. I'm sorry, I have to take my leave. Thank you for your reaction. Great work. Thank you for saying so. Great origin. And thank you all for being here. Love you all. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I think we have time for one more question in this formal structured atmosphere and we will transition into the lobby where we can continue discussion. Yes, we'll go one, two. I said one question, let's do it. So quickly, yes, man? Tanya, yeah. You can actually see millions of Russians living in Israel, Germany, and the United States. And look, there is a Russian theater in Houston, children's theater in Houston, in Boston. Prepare for that, there should be some playwrights. Since this is an international project, has this mirror image of their reality got any depiction, or have it got its way through across the borders in Moscow? Of immigration? American, right. Of people living in immigration. The short answer to that, Tanya, is no. And that's also a historical answer, largely, as you probably know. The writers left after the revolution, by and large, rarely did their best work. Nabokov is an extreme exception, thank you, thank you. The vast majority of writers who emigrated then and now tend not to do their best work after immigration. Playwrights, specifically, must be in the language. They must be in the culture. Without that, it's virtually impossible to write a good play. And so you get very, very, very few playwrights working in immigration. There were a few in the 20s, the teens, 20s, 30s, a very few, none of which have ever had any real impact. And so I feel very safe in saying that there is no one of importance doing it now. Be happy to be proved wrong. But at this point, I think that's a pretty clear answer. Thanks, John. And then Chris, you had a question? Yeah, of mine, I've worked in a collection that a lot of what is coming out is just this, not just, but is an exuberant expression of artistic freedom that had not been known previously. And you wonder how does now, are they going to just hold on to this artistic freedom that they have? Are they going to fight for it? Are they going to suffer for it? I don't want to dominate. Do you want to, do you guys want to take that? You don't want to take that? Well, I understand why she doesn't want to. I can, but I'm not as much in the material as you, for example. I know some projects that are happening, and I know the position of Yelena Natolevna Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov who are running the theater doc and that what they are doing and how they adjust themselves within their reality and political reality. They are doing, already done the two productions about the Magnitsky death, and it's a quite straightforward thing. It's kind of, it's not a court session, but it's a kind of artificial way of telling what these murderers will get after they die in a way, but revealing the actual facts of the case and actual names and interviews. It's very documentary based. And on the other hand, they get the government money and they do social projects on them and they go for schools and they do theatrical adaptations of plastics. So they kind of find their balance to save their artistic freedom and do right things anyway. Very briefly, kind of a coda. I'll just say that your question, Chris, in a sense presumes that it's kind of monolithic. You say, will they want to preserve their freedom? But all of these writers are all very different. They're all very, they're all individual. You have Nikolai Kalyada in Yekaterinburg actively supporting Putin and his policies. You have Gremina in Moscow actively opposing Putin's policies. You have Yuri Klavyev in St. Petersburg who is politically, is kind of like all over the place. If we talk about him politically, he's a very difficult figure to pin down. So it's, the answer, the reason nobody wanted to answer your question myself included is because it would take an entire history book. Yeah, that's a really big question, which is hard to answer. It's full diversity of different points. Well, then there's lots of time to talk about it. So let's do it. Thank you all so much.