Petrushevskaya Micro-Tragedy

Study of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's archive materials including manuscripts rejected by Soviet censors and her reflections on drama technique shows how she created unique artistic method. Petrushevskaya focused on everyday Soviet situations and revealed deep tragic potential within them. Her characters often speak incoherently, interrupt each other, struggle to express feelings but through this imperfection of speech shines through deep human truth. Petrushevskaya called this method poetic realism, combining precise fixation of speech facts with symbolic reading of the scene. Her works were so critical of Soviet reality that for long were not permitted to be staged. Only with the arrival of perestroika could her dramas be widely performed, revealing to a new generation the theatrical power of her micro-tragic visions.