Authors

Jesse Gardiner¹;  ¹ University of St Andrews, UK

Discussion

Aleksandr Vampilov (1937-1972) is an understudied playwright who left a small but significant body of work prior to his untimely death at the age of 34. This paper will explore the impact of his plays on Soviet audiences in the 1970s and analyse the way in which they offered a tragicomic perspective onto society in the stagnation era. As a writer of mixed ethnicity (Russian and Buryat), Vampilov brought peripheral locations and characters into the centre of his drama. However, my paper will question the the extent to which his plays managed to avoid the archetypes and hierarchies of the Soviet era.