What is it about?
An account by a contemporary British playwright of the particular challenges involved in adapting a Russian short story for the stage - and its premiere in Voronezh, Russia in 2019. Why this story, by this writer? Why now? What happens to prose fiction as it is wrestled into drama - and what can be learned from the experience?
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Why is it important?
Adaptation - or the rebirth of stories across multiple media - is a huge factor in contemporary art. The writer in this case - Andrey Platonov - was barely published in his own lifetime, having fallen foul of Stalin and his government's doctrine of Socialist Realism - the duty to write not about the present and all its privations, but about the glorious future made possible by the Russian Revolution. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Platonov's work has gradually become known in the west, where he has been compared with such literary greats as Kafka and Beckett - a silenced voice, now resonating.
Perspectives
Platonov to me is the poet of the fall out of revolution - in his case the soviet revolution in which he firmly believed. His continued belief in the capacity of ordinary people to build meaningful lives even in times of great hardship - and neglect from the authorities - is inspiring and hyper-relevant. His is also a genuinely working class voice - that of an engineer, turning to words as his prime material.
Fraser Grace
University of Cambridge
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Platonov or bust, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, March 2023, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/fict_00071_1.
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