Presentation of STEP-5, a collection of plays by authors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland

The Goethe Institute, the Swiss Pro Helvetia Council for Culture, the Swiss Embassy in Moscow, the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre present:

The collection was published by he Goethe-Institute in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum and Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Council for Culture. It is the continuation of STEP, a series of publications begun in 2005, which introduce the Russian theatre public to translations of modern German-language drama. Plays from the STEP collections have been staged in theaters throughout Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The new STEP-5 includes ten plays written over the past seven years and successfully staged on German-language stages. The range of names and genres is wide: from the parable of Roland Schimmelpfennig's The Great Fire, to the ironic reflexion of Sibylle Berg’s And the Ladies are Still Waiting; from the resonant Terror by Ferdinand von Schirach, to Legs Too Short by the young Katya Brunner and the debut of Stefan Hornbach, Game of Life, Game of Death - the paradoxical story of a young man with cancer. As often happens in German drama, these plays raise important, sensitive topics - from the attractiveness of terrorist ideas among Western European youth (Jihad by Volker Schmidt) to xenophobia and racism in modern Germany (Fear and Disgust by Dirk Lauke). These playwrights write in different genres and techniques, employing a realistic style, but at the same time searching for an interesting theatrical approach. These plays, which are often complex in style, have been translated by Russia’s best translators.

The foyer of the Stanislavsky Theater will host readings of three plays in the collection: Monsters Crash High-rises by Lukas Holliger (Switzerland) as translated by Svyatoslav Gorodetsky, Jihad by Volker Schmidt (Austria) as translated by Alexander Filippov-Chekhov, and Game of Life, Game of Death by Stephan Hornbach (Germany) as translated by Alexandra Gorbova.

Directing the readings are Nikita Betekhtin, Alisa Seletskaya and Talgat Batalov. Authors of all three plays will come to Moscow specially for the event.