Oleg Bogayev
Encyclopedia
Oleg Anatolyevich Bogayev , born 1970, is a Russian playwright
based in Yekaterinburg
. He has been described by Moscow Times theatre critic John Freedman as "one of the first and best-known students to graduate from[Nikolai] Kolyada’s playwriting course at the Yekaterinburg State Theatre Institute." He is now on the faculty at the same school. Bogaev is also the editor of the Ural literary magazine, a post he took over from his mentor Nikolai Kolyada in August 2010.
) in Russia
. He writes of growing up as the Cold War
gave way to the emergence of Perestroika
, a "change from the decay of the empire to the birth of a new society." He cites the social turmoil of recent decades as useful for artistic product: "[What] I know is that Russia is just the right place for a playwright - with shattering of fates, conflicts, crumbling of hopes, clashes of ideas - all that I've seen and experienced."
Bogayev became interested in writing as a teenager, spurred by what he describes as "two tragedies": first love and the death of his father. He began writing poems and short stories. He worked in theatre as a set and lighting designer; he became interested in writing plays after being exposed to the work of Harold Pinter
.
In 1997, Bogayev won the Anti-Booker Prize
for Русская народная почта (The Russian National Postal Service) and the award for Best Play at Russia's Golden Mask
Festival for that same play.
for a stage play and the award for Best Play at Russia's Golden Mask
Festival. The play first came to public attention at a dramatic reading during the 1997 Lyubimovka Festival of Young Playwrights; it was later produced in a revised form as Room of Laughter, directed by Kama Ginkas
and starring Oleg Tabakov
in 1998. It has subsequently been performed translated into English and French and has been produced in London
, Montreal
, and Washington, D.C.
as well as around the Slavic world.
The Russian National Postal Service follows impoverished Russian pensioner Ivan Zhukov on his descent into madness. He engages in fanciful correspondence, writing letters to important world figures (living, dead, and fictional) and then writes replies to himself on their behalf. Prominent among his imagined correspondents are Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Soviet Russia's Vladimir Lenin
, as well as cosmonauts, Russian officials, and Robinson Crusoe
. The play has often been compared to the works of Nikolai Gogol
for its absurdism
and treatment of alienation
.
Few of Bogayev's works other than The Russian National Postal Service have been produced in the English speaking world. His play Maria's Field (Марьино поле) received its United States
premiere in 2009 by the TUTA Theatre
of Chicago
. The play explores the fate of three 100-year-old women on a journey through a Russian forest
, encountering figures from their own past and from 20th century Russian history. Bogaev relates that the story was inspired by his grandmother, Anafisa, and others like her whose husbands were declared "missing" during war and who still hoped for their return. He writes "The fate of men was easier than the fate of women. It is harder to wait than to die." Despite the tragic theme of the play, it is leavened by a "whimsical and wistful" tone and a "comical cow" accompanying the women on their journey.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
based in Yekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's...
. He has been described by Moscow Times theatre critic John Freedman as "one of the first and best-known students to graduate from
Biography
Oleg Bogayev was born in 1970 in the city of Sverdlovsk (now called YekaterinburgYekaterinburg
Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural center of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,350,136 , making it Russia's...
) in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. He writes of growing up as the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
gave way to the emergence of Perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
, a "change from the decay of the empire to the birth of a new society." He cites the social turmoil of recent decades as useful for artistic product: "
Bogayev became interested in writing as a teenager, spurred by what he describes as "two tragedies": first love and the death of his father. He began writing poems and short stories. He worked in theatre as a set and lighting designer; he became interested in writing plays after being exposed to the work of Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
.
In 1997, Bogayev won the Anti-Booker Prize
Anti-Booker prize
Anti-booker Russian literary award that existed between 1995 and 2001. Established by newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta using money of Boris Berezovsky. Its name refers to British-sponsored Russian Booker and differences are:...
for Русская народная почта (The Russian National Postal Service) and the award for Best Play at Russia's Golden Mask
Golden Mask
The Golden Mask is a Russian theatre festival and the National Theatre Award established in 1994 by the Theatre Union of Russia. The award is given to productions in all genres of theatre art: drama, opera, ballet, operetta and musical, and puppet theatre. It presents the most significant...
Festival for that same play.
Plays
The author of over 30 plays, he is best known for his play Русская народная почта (Russkaya Narodnaya Pochta, variously translated as The Russian National Postal Service, The Russian People's Post, etc.), for which he has won the 1997 Anti-Booker PrizeAnti-Booker prize
Anti-booker Russian literary award that existed between 1995 and 2001. Established by newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta using money of Boris Berezovsky. Its name refers to British-sponsored Russian Booker and differences are:...
for a stage play and the award for Best Play at Russia's Golden Mask
Golden Mask
The Golden Mask is a Russian theatre festival and the National Theatre Award established in 1994 by the Theatre Union of Russia. The award is given to productions in all genres of theatre art: drama, opera, ballet, operetta and musical, and puppet theatre. It presents the most significant...
Festival. The play first came to public attention at a dramatic reading during the 1997 Lyubimovka Festival of Young Playwrights; it was later produced in a revised form as Room of Laughter, directed by Kama Ginkas
Kama Ginkas
Kama Ginkas is a Russian and Soviet theatre director.Born to a Jewish family, Ginkas was a student of Georgy Tovstonogov, Ginkas has collaborated with most major theatres in Moscow and St...
and starring Oleg Tabakov
Oleg Tabakov
Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov is a Soviet and Russian actor and the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theatre.-Theatre career:...
in 1998. It has subsequently been performed translated into English and French and has been produced in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
as well as around the Slavic world.
The Russian National Postal Service follows impoverished Russian pensioner Ivan Zhukov on his descent into madness. He engages in fanciful correspondence, writing letters to important world figures (living, dead, and fictional) and then writes replies to himself on their behalf. Prominent among his imagined correspondents are Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Soviet Russia's Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, as well as cosmonauts, Russian officials, and Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
. The play has often been compared to the works of Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
for its absurdism
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
and treatment of alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
.
Few of Bogayev's works other than The Russian National Postal Service have been produced in the English speaking world. His play Maria's Field (Марьино поле) received its United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
premiere in 2009 by the TUTA Theatre
TUTA Theatre
TUTA Theatre or The Utopian Theatre Asylum is a nonprofit theater company in Chicago.TUTA was established in 1995 in Washington, D.C., and its mission is "to engage the American audience with relevant theatre challenging in both form and content." TUTA has produced and created multiple critically...
of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. The play explores the fate of three 100-year-old women on a journey through a Russian forest
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
, encountering figures from their own past and from 20th century Russian history. Bogaev relates that the story was inspired by his grandmother, Anafisa, and others like her whose husbands were declared "missing" during war and who still hoped for their return. He writes "The fate of men was easier than the fate of women. It is harder to wait than to die." Despite the tragic theme of the play, it is leavened by a "whimsical and wistful" tone and a "comical cow" accompanying the women on their journey.
Notable Productions of The Russian National Postal Service
| Date | Theatre | Director | Language (Translator) | Title as Produced | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 1997 | Lyubimovka Festival of Young Playwrights, Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... |
unknown | Russian (not in translation) | Русская народная почта (The Russian National Postal Service) | staged reading |
| Fall 1998 | Tabakov Theater, Moscow Moscow Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent... |
Kama Ginkas Kama Ginkas Kama Ginkas is a Russian and Soviet theatre director.Born to a Jewish family, Ginkas was a student of Georgy Tovstonogov, Ginkas has collaborated with most major theatres in Moscow and St... |
Russian (not in translation) | Komnata Smekha (Room of Laughter) | World Premiere |
| May 2001 | International Playwrights Festival, Royal Court Theatre, London London London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its... |
unknown | English (Tom Birchenough) | Russian National Post | |
| Fall 2001 | Théâtre Espace Go Théâtre Espace Go Théâtre Espace Go is a theatre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1985 as the feminist Théâtre Expérimental des Femmes, the company changed its name to Théâtre Espace Go in 1994 and broadened its mandate.In 1988, it received the Grand Prix from the Conseil des arts de Montréal for its... , Montreal Montreal Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America... |
Luce Pelletier | French (Fabrice Gex) | La Poste Populaire Russe (The Russian People's Post) | |
| Fall 2004 | Studio Theatre, Washington DC | Paul Mullins | English (John Freedman) | The Russian National Postal Service | United States Premiere |
| Summer 2005 | Sputnik Theatre Company, London London London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its... |
Noah Birksted-Breen | English (Noah Birksted-Breen) | The Russian National Mail | Noted by The Guardian The Guardian The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format... and The Independent The Independent The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily... as the British premiere despite 2001 festival performance |
List of Selected Plays
- The Russian National Postal Service (aka Room of Laughter, The Russian People's Post), 1997
- Phallus Imitator (aka Falloimitator, Phallic Imitator)
-
- The Rubber Prince is a musical based on Phallus Imitator, 2003
- The Great Wall of China
- Dead Ears, or A History of Toilette Paper
- Maria's Field
External links
- Production photos of Russian People's Post as well as a video clip from a 1999 production at Triumviratus Art Group, BulgariaBulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
- Script for The Russian National Postal Service: A Room of Laughter for a Lonely Pensioner By Oleg Bogaev, Translated by John Freedman, as first produced in this translation at the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C., Sept.-Oct. 2004 (Microsoft Word format)