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VIKTORIA SELIVANOVA

“In literature that is deaf, deprived of sense, and lacking subject, that is, literature devoid of theme and idea, driven to total incapacity through a depravity of words, one option remains... That option is drama. In theatre words become actions- explanations. In theatre word takes on body through actors. In theatre words escape their textuality to, in the two hours of the course of a play, adapt to time as understood by the contemporary audience. Action represents a triumph over literary silence. It is possible even when it leads nowhere. Subtracting from literature everything that can be spoken, Beckett worked at the boundary of what separates words from silence. There he searched for what separates the human from the non-human, humanity from things, nature, and God”.
The above excerpt is from “Darkness and Silence”, Alexander Guinness’s essay on Samuel Beckett. His words apply to literature “on the boundary” as well as to “borderline” theatre. Although in reality they can adequately describe any literary (real, not profane or pedestrian) text regardless of genre, style, epoch, or author. Nevertheless, we consistently return to the concepts of “word”, “action”, “silence”. Essentially, in texts we look for what “characterizes a human”. This is a closed circle within which all seekers of truth orbit, and characteristically, never find any answers.

Junior researcher at the Les’ Kurbas State Centre for Theatre Arts. Graduated from the philology faculty of the Taras Shevchenko National State University in 1995. Residency for the candidate degree was completed in 1998 (Department of the History of Ukrainian Literature). This was followed by short-time tenure as an employee of the Institute of Ukrainian Studies and the Lesia Ukrainka State Museum. Currently working on her candidate’s thesis, entitled “Symbolic Systems in the Dramaturgy of V. Vynnychenko (Pre-Emigration Period)”. Authored chapter entitled “Dramatic Discourse 1900-1920: the Monopoly of the Word (Based on the Work of Lesia Ukrainka and Volodymyr Vynnychenko)” in the collective monograph 20th Century Ukrainian Theatre. Publishes in periodicals (culture-oriented topics: new books, theatrical productions, art projects).

Research interests are centred around the area of discursive practice, especially addressing the existence of singular verbal paradigms under conditions of their transformation from one discursive formation into another. Also interested in post-modern multiculturalism as a concept connected with the term “norm”, i.e., correlating with “rules” and “borders”.




 

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