Between similarity and clear difference: Polish plays for the Russian theatre landscape (1989–2010)

Abstract

After 1989/90, and especially since the end of the 1990s, remarkable change has been going on in the Polish (Schultze and Makarczyk-Schuster 2008; Burzyńska 2013) and the Russian (Davydova 2005; Göbler and Rodewald 2013) theatre landscapes. While Russian experts see an “end of a theatre epoch” (Davydova) Polish specialists observe a return to fairly stable working conditions (Burzyńska). What interests most, is the unprecedented boom of new plays – mainly variants of non-literary drama – since the end of the 1990s. The Polish plays and much of Russian “New Drama” (Beumers and Lipovetsky 2009) show thematical and structural similarities, but also differences. Comparative analyses of 14 Polish plays in Russian translation mainly based on Roman Pawłowski’s representative choice of dramatists and theatre texts (“Antologija sovremennoj pol’skoj dramaturgii”, 2010), together with analogies and differences in the source and receiving cultures, explore the type of translational challenge in non-literary drama and the handling of the cultural technique drama translation by the Russian translators.