The Witching Hour and Other Plays by Nina Sadur [Paperback]

Nina Sadur, the playwright, occupies a prominent place in the Soviet/Russian drama pantheon of the 1980s and 1990s, a group that has with few exceptions been generally ignored by the Western literary establishment. The plays included in this volume offer some of Sadurs most influential works for the theater to the English-speaking audience for the first time. The collection will appeal to readers interested in Russian literature and culture, Russian theater, as well as womens literature. Sadurs plays are inspired by symbolist drama, the theater of the absurd and Russian folklore, yet are also infused with contemporary reality and populated by contemporary characters. Her work is overtly gynocentric: the fictional world construes womens traditionally downplayed concerns as narratively and existentially central and crucial. Sadurs drama has exerted a tremendous influence on contemporary Russian literature. Working essentially in isolation, Sadur was able to combine the early twentieth century dramatic discourse with that of the late Soviet era. Having built a bridge between the two eras, Sadur prepared the rise of the new Russian drama of the 2000s.This new collection of four plays by Nina Sadur is a welcome addition to the fields of both Russian literature and theatre. It includes some of Sadurs best-known works as well as some lesser-known plays. . . . [A] very successful collection . . . Finally English-language readers can become familiar with the disquieting, mysterious, yet disturbingly physical world of Nina Sadur, surely one of the major Russian writers to have emerged since the 1970's. Her prose works and plays are almost literally spellbinding.Sadurs plays are discomforting~ they uproot certainties, allowing deep and ugly forces to disrupt the strained surface of Soviet life. . . . The translations in this new collection of Sadurs plays were collaborative efforts~ together with the introduction, they will allow practitioners to understand the l3,