Olga Mukhina is one of the most talented, young playwrights in Russia. Born in Moscow in 1970, she has already garnered enviable praise from critics and audiences throughout Russia and Europe since her first play, Tanya-Tanya, was performed in 1996.
Tanya-Tanya is an atmospheric, poetic tale that observes three couples at a suburban Moscow home who dance, drink champagne, kiss, fall in and out of love, and struggle with dignity and humor to keep some semblance of control over their lives. The parallels with Chekhovian drama are undeniable and clearly intended by the author.
You, Mukhina's most recent work, is a love poem to her hometown of Moscow as well as a scathing attack on the apathy of people blindly wrapped up in their own happiness and sorrow.

This is a collection of John Freedman's reviews and articles, most originally written for the Moscow Times, in which he focuses his expert critical eye on the directors, writers and actors who held centre stage during the 1996-97 theatre season in Moscow.
The book looks at the debut of promising new artists and directors at the Moscow Art Theatre celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and offers a wealth of insight into the latest developments in Russian theatre.
Freedman illuminates all of the season's noteworthy trends and events in clear, informed and unapologetically opinionated reports. More than just an overview of the stars and highlights, Moscow Performances II observes at close range the playhouses and the people who make up the ever-changing face of contemporary Russian theatre today.
This volume is generously illustrated with photographs of featured productions and will be a useful reference for students, professors, writers, directors and actors in the fields of Russian studies, theatre studies, theatre history and contemporary culture.

The reviews and features collected in John Freedman's Moscow Performances bring to life the diversity, energy, and imagination of Russian theater as few books have done before. While focusing on the work of Moscow's leading directors - Pyotr Fomenko, Kama Ginkas, Valery Fokin, Anatoly Vasilyev, Konstantin Raikin, Sergei Zhenovach, Yury Lyubimov, and many others - also included in its review are key productions by many of the renowned guests who bring their art to the Russian capital. Essays on St. Petersburg's Lev Dodin (of the Maly Drama Theatre), Lithuania's Eimuntas Nekrosius, Georgia's Robert Sturua, and Germany's Peter Stein confirm that Moscow's position as a "theatrical mecca" has not diminished since Anatoly Lunacharsky coined the phrase in the 1920s.
In addition to recording Freedman's immediate and opinionated responses to Moscow stage developments in the 1990s, Moscow Performances contains a wealth of information about the struggles and occasional triumphs of a new generation of talented but as yet unknown playwrights, the successes of the best actors, and the social and financial trends which have had such an impact on Russian theatre in the post-Soviet period.

First Published in 1995. A Meeting About Laughter is a collection of sketches, interludes and theatrical parodies by Nikolai Erdman, Vladimir Mass and others. Translated from the Russian Theatre Archive by John Freedman, Harvard University. Erdman is best known as the author of The Warrant and The Suicide, both written for Vsevolod Meyerhold in the 1920s. Also including the transcript of a startling discussion of The Suicide at the Vakhtangov Theatre in 1930 and the only surviving fragments of Erdman's third play The Hypnotist.

"Bald/Brunet" by Daniil Gink and "Nijinsky" by Alexei Burykin are unquestionably the two most celebrated new dramatic works to appear in Russia in the 1990s. Both were written by first-time playwrights in their early twenties, and both became the talk of Moscow overnight after they appeared. As Russian culture continues to struggle with the past, these plays are clear signs that Russian drama, at least, is on the verge of finding a voice for the future. Coincidentally or not, both works center on a single character whose personality breaks into two warring halves. "Bald/Brunet" is a wise and touching examination of an aging jazz musician, while "Nijinsky," based on the case of the great Polish-Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, is a soaring hymn to the enigma and autonomy of genius. These new Russian plays are musical and poetic, provocative and insightful, tender yet tragic. And they each have equally as much to say about universal human values as they do about the Russian experien

This volume contains the full text in English of both "The Suicide" and Nikolai Erdman's first major, albeit less known work, "The Warrant." Although both plays were written in the early 1920s, they were haunted by the political spectre of totalitarianism and it was only in the 1980s that they began to be staged regularly worldwide. The plays themselves, full of political satire and paradox, show the immense skill of this playwright, and the introduction by John Freedman provides valuable insights into the historical context of the plays, highlighting Erdman's unique use of language. These new translations are well illustrated with little-known archival production photographs and drawings of the period.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.