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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