Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights

Satellites and Comets; Summer Lightning; A Little Hero; A Child for Olya; The Pillow’s Soul; Every Shade of Blue; A City Flower

Roman Kozyrchikov, Andrey Rodionov, Ekaterina Troepolskaya, Valery Pecheykin, Natalya Milantyeva, Olzhas Zhanaydarov, Elizaveta Letter, Vladimir Zaytsev, Tatiana Klepikova

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781350203778
• eBook ISBN: 9781350203792
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Théâtre

Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights is the first anthology of LGBTQ-themed plays written by Russian queer authors and straight allies in the 21st century.

The book features plays by established and emergent playwrights of the Russian drama scene, including Roman Kozyrchikov, Andrey Rodionov and Ekaterina Troepolskaya, Valery Pecheykin, Natalya Milanteva, Olzhas Zhanaydarov, Vladimir Zaytsev, and Elizaveta Letter. Writing for children, teenagers, and adults, these authors explore gay, lesbian, trans, and other queer lives in prose and in verse.

From a confession-style solo play to poetic satire on contemporary Russia; from a play for children to love dramas that have been staged for adult-only audiences in Moscow and other cities, this important anthology features work that was written around or after 2013-the year when the law on the prohibition of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors" was passed by the Russian government. These plays are universal stories of humanity that spread a message of tolerance, acceptance, and love and make clear that a queer scenario does not necessarily have to end in a tragedy just because it was imagined and set in Russia. They show that breathing, growing old, falling in love, falling out of love, and falling in love again can be just as challenging and rewarding in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia as it can be in New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg, or Buenos Aires.

Every Shade of Blue¹

PLAY (BASED ON A TRUE STORY)
(21+)²

Vladimir Zaytsev

Vladimir Zaytsev was born in 1985 in Orenburg, where he still lives. He started writing prose when he was twelve and expanded his repertoire to drama and film scripts during his studies at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. He is a member of the Moscow Writers Union. His plays include With a Hammer. With a Shovel (appeared in the journal Contemporary Drama), Moscow-Noginsk (appeared in Contemporary Drama and in 10 Best Plays of the Drama Competition “Characters”), Just Yura (appeared in the magazine Gostinyi dvor and in the collection of plays by the Foundation SEIP), as well as Hammer. Brick. Shovel (came out in the collection Eight). The play Every Shade of Blue, featured in this anthology, has run at the Satirikon theater in Moscow since 2015 and was also staged in English in 2016 by Northern Illinois University School of Theatre and Dance as Out of the Blue (in the translation by Tatyana Khaikin and Robert Duffley).

Author’s address
There is no animal more frightening than man.

Characters

Boy—a teenager, high school student

Mom—Boy’s mom, Sveta Biketova

Dad—Boy’s dad, Kolya Biketov

Grandma—Boy’s grandma

Vika Malakhova—an eighth-grader

Yegor Averyanov—a sixteen-year-old

Lena Nevzorova—Boy’s classmate

Chemistry Teacher

Taxi Drivers: One, Two, Three

Natasha—Boy’s classmate

Classmates: One, Two, Three, Four

Exorcist

Princess LeiaLuke Skywalker

Frail Guy

Fashionably Dressed Guy

Viola

Nurse

Part One: The Die Is Cast

Boy It all started with the simple “Mom, Dad, I’m gay.” Of course, it wasn’t that simple. “Simple” would have looked like this:

Boy Mom, Dad, I’m gay.

Mom Oh, great! And I made meat piroshki for dinner. Let’s eat!

Boy That’s what “simple” looks like. But that’s not how it went…

First, it wasn’t simple for me to figure out that I liked boys and was not into girls at all. It’s not like you can just go shopping, buy a pink button-down shirt, and everyone immediately realizes that you have no taste. Or a fortune teller looks at you and says, “This one’s gonna grow up to be gay.” And you just grow up, and everything’s clear already. Here you have to dig deep, you have to figure out who you really are.

Take daycare, for example. I was friends with two Sashas: a boy Sasha and a girl Sasha. So, do you think I liked the boy Sasha more than the girl Sasha? Not at all! I liked them both, and I liked spending time with both of them. Sasha and I even had a fight once over the other Sasha; you know, the girl Sasha. And, by the way, I won. (Pause.) So how should I have figured out that I was gay? Feel it in my bones?

Or, when I started school, they seated me next to Sveta Buravleva. Blonde hair, a big nose. Should I have protested and told them I wanted to sit next to a boy? Of course not! I was fine sitting next to Sveta, I copied Russian off her, she cheated off me in math. We also walked to school together ’cause we lived close by. I even kissed her once. Sure, it was just on the cheek, but it still counts. I can’t say it was incredibly amazing, but it wasn’t gross or anything. I mean, I’d kissed my grandma on the cheek just like that before. So it was pretty much the same, just the skin was just less wrinkled. I mean, it was not wrinkled at all … anyway, at the time, there were no clues of my sexual orientation either.

And then, in the seventh or eighth grade, everyone started dating, and (pause) I tried it too. Not with Sveta, though—by that time she’d changed schools. There was a girl in my class, her name was Vika Malakhova. A girl just like any other, with thick glasses and braids. Not a stunning beauty, but I liked that she had dimples when she smiled. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the dimples, I wouldn’t have even thought about her, but there I went and wrote a note and during the break, when she wasn’t looking, I slipped it into her backpack. “After school, come to the pavilion, alone.” Of course, I didn’t sign it.

We have this pavilion thing behind the schoolyard, a big one, where everyone hangs out when they skip class. Or, if they want to have a smoke, they also head there, so they don’t get busted by the teachers. It always stands empty after school ’cause nobody needs to hide there anymore, obviously, and it only gets busy again at night, when the local winos hang out there and drink.

Anyway, Vika found my note, read it, and gave me such a look at once that I freaked out and hid behind a textbook. There it was, I thought, she’d see right through me, figure out I wrote that note, and wouldn’t come; but when I dared to look over the physics textbook, I saw her scanning all the guys, so I calmed down. Good, she didn’t know it was me—well, of course, I made sure to change my handwriting. And there she came.

Vika Malakhova Oh … so it was you … I racked my brain trying to figure out who’d do something that weird? I was sure it was Mishka Semenov—he’s always playing pranks. I was even thinking of not coming, but I was curious—what if it wasn’t a prank? What if somebody else wrote it? And it turns out, it was you.

Boy Yep, it was me.

Vika Malakhova So, what do you want?

Boy Not beating around the bush, are you?

Vika Malakhova Why drag things out? (She pushes her lips forward ready for a kiss.)

Boy Can you smile, please?

...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: Landscapes of Russian Queer Drama
• Note on Certain Idiosyncrasies of Russian that Repeat Throughout the Book
• Satellites and Comets
• Summer Lightning
• A Little Hero
• A Child for Olya
• The Pillow’s Soul
• Every Shade of Blue
• A City Flower
• Copyright