The Saint Petersburg Theatre of Generations’ Documentary Performance About the Blockade ‘67/871’ Based on the Play by E. Gremin. Experience of the Artistic Interpretation of Documentary Material

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the recent experience of the interaction of the documentary and non-documentary branches of contemporary Russian theatre in the process of creation of the St. Petersburg Theatre Pokoleniy (Theatre of Generations) project “67/871” based on the play by the playwright, the founder and the leader of Theatre.doc, Elena Gremina. A brief background of the mutual distancing of the documentary theater and the traditional dramatic theater, as well as the preconditions that allowed the Theater Pokoleniy to go against this trend, are considered. Further, the originality of the authors of the play is revealed, the attempt of the modern appeal to the blockade of Leningrad through the use of the latest techniques of documentary theater, interviews of eyewitnesses, verbatim. Through the various stages of the production, an analysis is made of the mutual influence of the principles of documentary theater (text-centeredness, acting “zero position”) and Theater Pokoleniy’s ways of creating devised performances. Various aspects of the composition of the play — set design, costumes, music, acting techniques, and individual stage decisions — are considered as possible examples of the expansion of practical tools for working with documentary material. An important part of the study is the analysis of critical reviews of the “67/871” project shows in Russia and Germany, which allow comparison of the process of working on a performance with the effect it produced on critics and the public. The play “67/871” is considered in the article as a step towards the formation of new links of documentary and dramatic theater.