Theatrical reading: from a theatrical format to the separate dramatic genre of a “text for performance”

This article deals with the phenomenon of theatrical reading (“chitka,” the performative reading of a play out loud before an audience) as a sociocultural phenomenon. Theatrical reading has had an enormous impact on the whole theatrical process in general and on Russian-speaking drama in particular. This article discusses the connection between theatrical reading and the New Drama, from the emergence of the Liubimovka contemporary play laboratory at Yasnaia Poliana to current acoustic experiments with plays in cyberspace by playwrights. The author examines the historical background of the emergence of this theatrical genre in the German theater of Bertolt Brecht and the domestic adaptation of its use by the ideologists of Russianlanguage documentary theater. The author describes the long and fruitful collaboration between young authors, directors, and Moscow’s Teatr.doc, headed by its theoreticians - and, in fact, the “parents” of the new drama - Mikhail Ugarov and Elena Gremina.