The figure of the narrator as a way to create a “documentary” plot in the historical plays-parables by E. Radzinsky

Abstract

The article studies the peculiarities of dramatic narration in E. Radzinsky’s plays-parables. Modern theater and dramaturgy strive to reflect the qualitative changes in representative forms and their potential stage possibilities. One of these forms is the reception of dramatic narration, when the event that is being shown is replaced by the event that is being told about. This technique is actively used by the playwright E. Radzinsky in his historical plays-parables “Conversations with Socrates”, “Lunin, or the Death of Jacques”, “Theater of the Times of Nero and Seneca”, “The Executioner, or Conversations on the Way to the Guillotine”. Despite the fact that the plot is based on a documentary (or pseudo-documentary) text: the story of the life and execution of Socrates, described by Plato; “Moral Letters” to Lucilius (procurator of Sicily) by Seneca; “Letters from Siberia” by Mikhail Lunin; “Notes of an Executioner” by Charles Henri Sanson, the famous executioner during the era of the Great French Revolution, the play has a setting for oral speech. The playwright uses various techniques in constructing a plot to introduce this kind of a narrator into the text. The protagonist acts as a narrator, his position, the system of evidence, the testimony that the narrator uses – all these create an attitude of authenticity, the semblance of documentarity.