Dramaturgy as a Contemporary Art, Part Jenya stashkov for NNC Gallery London Project part 2

Jenya Stashkov
Sep 8, 2023
2 min read

Hello, friends! And we continue to get acquainted with contemporary and unusual ways of being a playwright. In order to be a playwright, it is not necessary to use words. Just like it is not necessary to be a musician to use sounds, I repeat, but dramaturgy (in a sublime ideal representation) is the practise of gaining one's own freedom. In today's selection of plays, I want to present you with four plays. Three out of four of the four plays are visual plays, that is, plays in which the most important thing is visual imagery. A visual play is something not yet institutionalized but similar to something at the junction of modern visual poetry, comics, and scores of modern avant-garde music. Visual plays have been around for a long time, but they haven't managed to become mainstream. I am also very pleased and proud that these three visual plays were created by graduates of my visual drama laboratory. The play at number 4 is the last play on the shortlist for the "Neem" Award. And at the end of the article (if you get there), a small video bonus will be waiting for you. Let's go!

I came out of the closet at 03:54

by Kesha Bashinsky

This is a visual queer play about physicality, politics, artefacts of time, and the intimate process of reinterpretation (traumatic? Transgressive? Inspiring?) of personal experience. A series of laconic auto fiction compositions referring to mediaeval iconographic techniques.

The play is in two parts

Part 1

SOME ARTWORK FROM THE PROJECT

4. zombies

13. lyosha

14. marusya

Көл менен убакыт (The Time with the Lake)

by Jenya Polyanskaya

This visual play is a field study of the boundaries between humans and non-humans, an ephemeral and pacifying attempt to acquire language and communication tactics with natural agents.

SOME ARTWORK FROM THE PROJECT

now and forever

by Alina Sagacheeva

This is a play about feelings and traumas, phantoms of the past, and thought forms of the experience of inner transformation. This is a brutal and cruel narrative about the subtle feelings of the world that infinitely wound us, and about the reciprocal wound.

SOME ARTWORK FROM THE PROJECT

A Play of Angelic Visitation

by R.W. Schneider

A mystical visionary text that collides epochs and ideas and asks eternal questions A virtuoso balancing act between laughter, drama, and tragedy in a world without God, filled with divine energies

SOME PAGES FROM THE PROJECT