SYNOPSES
IN CLOSE-UP
Plays for the kamernyi theatre
Viktor Bol'shakov
"A Subject of the Moon"
a play in one act
The last day in the life of a real historical figure: the great romantic and dreamer Cyrano de Bergerac. It is a day full of doubts, struggles against circumstances, full of poetry and utopian dreams.
One male role
Andrey Zinchuk
"Monkey"
a play in two acts
A home for retired actors: the imperceptible border between winter and spring, a sliver of time dividing night from morning, a moment between life and death which is as long as a man's fate. An aged, lonely Primadonna all by herself. And a dishevelled, barefoot, tear-stained girl, who has been borne into the room by a torrent of cold spring air - this is the nineteen year-old "Monkey" herself. Why is she here? To fling in the face of the Primadonna the unendurable words: "I have felt as though someone who came before me has already taken my life and chewed it up"? Or is it a chance to live life over again?
Female roles - 2
Vadim Shmelev
"The Transparent Woman"
a play in one act
A completely transparent story of how a man lives his life without realising that happiness is right beside him. But a guardian angel appears who opens the man's eyes, and he discovers a new life.
2 male roles, 1 female role
Igor' Shprits
"IT"
a domestic tragedy
Elena and Aleksandr have just signed their marriage certificate. The excited guests are expecting a celebratory banquet, but first the young couple have to go through one more - quite new - ceremony: "alone together, you must say to each other words pledging your faithfulness, words of love and friendship, words of hope..." It would appear to be quite a simple matter for two people who love one another. But the room to which they are taken has no doors and no windows. What it does have is a ceiling which is slowly being lowered. With the threat of imminent death now a reality, everything else becomes superfluous: insincere affection, belated confessions, pointless insults. Nothing has any meaning! Only love does.
1 male role, 1 female role.
Sergei Nosov
"Don Pedro"
a comedy
Grigorii Vasil'evich and Anton Antonovich are friends and neighbours. The share the same interests: when are the dustmen coming, what the tenants in the flat downstairs get up to. But it is not these trivial everyday matters which really bring them together. It is ... Brazil. Anton Antonovich is planning to marry his only niece to the Brazilian Don Pedro. And Grigorii Vasil'evich has discovered that he has Brazilian roots.
2 male roles
Valerii Tsikalov
"Blind man's Buff"
It is sometimes hard to understand what helps people make the right decision when dealing with a vitally important question: it may be their own desires, or someone else's help, or the intervention of some otherworldly forces. In this story too there are far too many unknown quantities: a man was sitting on a bench waiting for his daughter, dreaming about being reconciled with her, but he was too scared to approach her. Instead he caught the eye of a woman he didn't know, she invited him home, brewed up some herbs and served the brew, carefully made up a bed and heard his difficult confession. But one other person also took part in this story. Who was he?
Two male roles, one female role
FIRST STEPS
Igor' Grigor'ev
"He promised her a night of paradise"
a one-act play
It really did happen in St Petersburg on one of those warm white nights in summer, although it is perfectly possible that all this happened on a horribly rainy evening in November. The heroes of this story are young, although, perhaps, they are getting on for forty. We are reliably informed that he and she have never met before, though it is entirely likely that their relationship has been going on for some time. But it is absolutely clear - as the author insists - that this is a story about love.
1 male role, 1 female role.
Tat'yana Katinskaya
Station "Brief Encounter"
A chance meeting of two fellow-students
He is a very successful man, who, it would seem, has got everything he needs out of life: material well-being, a happy family, a prestigious contract with an American firm. She used to bewitch all the young men in the faculty, and was a remarkable artists' muse under the name "Gala", but today she is just a lonely woman. Then, when they were both young, there were some faint sparks of attraction between them which have now flared up unexpectedly and brightly. But during all the years they spent apart their lives filled up with all kinds of different things. And it is not so simple to ignore it all.
1 male role, 2 female roles
DRAMATIC SKETCHES
Andrei Zinchuk
"The Light of Loneliness"
At some point every man has to do some serious thinking about his life. He has to think about how hard it is to go back home after a chance night with a stranger, about how difficult it is to explain to yourself why you did it. And about how completely impossible it is to understand that ... woman.
The role can be played by an actor or an actress.
Sergei Nosov
"Fate"
a scene from the play "Small World"
Ivan the Fool really did marry his frog. And he is still married to this day - she lives in a large glass jar. He is learning to talk to her in frog language. An old friend of Ivan's has seen this with his own eyes. He just didn't believe the rumours!
A real, and therefore paradoxical embodiment of a motif from a Russian fairy tale.
2 male roles
Oleg Ernev.
"Don Juan grown old"
What is there left in life for the elderly Don Juan? Wine and his pipe... And albums of pictures of all his former lovers. Even the faithful Leporello is dead. There is no-one left to talk to.
2 male roles
SCENES FROM BYGONE TIMES
Liudmila Razumovskaia
"Happiness"
a one-act play
At last her husband has come back home. Without taking off his wet raincoat he has spat on the floor and demanded a hot dinner. His wife tries to bear his reproaches and boorish behaviour with jokes and affection, but today her hubby has really gone too far. Don't you get married, girls!..
1 male role, 1 female role
Oleg Danilov
"The worker and the collective-farm woman"
a play in one act
One is allowed to fight for the truth! This is the conclusion reached by exemplary workers Ivan Pavlovich Nikanorovя- a worker from Nizhne-Ural'sk and Klavdiia Petrovna Shirokikh - a mechanic from the "Dawn" collective farm. What have they got to lose? A place at the factory bench and a seat on the combine harvester. "All the more so, as they already have all possible material advantages", reason Ivan Pavlovich and Klavdiia Petrovna, who have been left alone for too long together rather carelessly by a seminar leader from the Association of workers of the town and country.
Ah, this is going to bring about so many good things!.. The people will feel that they are in charge, they will give up drinking and start to work properly! And the heroes of our story will find their private lives put in order. It is, of course, easier to fight injustice together. It's just a pity that the seminar leader came back and explained to them what what is meant by correct criticism.
2 male roles, 1 female role
Boris Solov'ev
"A fifty-kopeck piece"
A comedy in one act
Foma Fomich is not just the factory's economist, but also a fierce opponent of wasteful attitudes towards state property. And he is the one visited by a terrible calamity - a shiny new fifty-kopeck piece slips out of his hands and rolls into a crack in the floor. Foma Fomich cannot bear this loss - it's his very own fifty-kopeck piece! Two orders for significant sums of money from the pockets of the state have already been signed, but the blood-sucking carpenter Malyshev doesn't want to lift the floorboards. Obviously, Foma Fomich concludes, he's dreaming of extorting even more cash, the old scrounger.
2 male roles, 1 female role
Translations into English by
Dr Katharine Hodgson
Russian Department
School of Modern Languages
University of Exeter
England