A “missed” event in the action of a contemporary play

The article discusses strategies for creating a chain of events in the action of a contemporary play. The materials presented are the texts having been read recently at the festival of “young drama” “Lyubimovka”. One of the tendencies that attracts attention is the use of the so-called “missed” events, that is, the ones excluded from the plot of the story become implied. As a rule, these are the events related to psychological or physical violence. While the representatives of the so-called “new drama” that emerged in the 1990s fixed reality, showing in plays the ugliest aspects of life, today’s playwrights are turning to other methods. They either deliberately skip “terrible” events, or conceal their meaning, or replace the events with others that are perceived as similar in the structure of the text. In this regard, a special kind of conflict is created, when drama characters are unwillingly drawn into confrontation and cannot resist external influences. The conflict in such plays is simulative, more often than not, it remains unresolved, but playwrights suggest alternative ways of getting out of conflict situations. That is why in the latest drama there are plots that tell about the chain of events, unlike was the case in the “new drama” plays ending with the protagonist’s death. The consequences, that is, how the characters would act in the future, become more important than what has happened to them. Since interest in a person’s private life is still in the focus of contemporary authors’ attention, it can be assumed that such strategies for constructing a dramatic action will be in demand in near future.