Degradation in Hypermasculine Cultures of Disposability and Forgetfulness: Nikolai Kolyada’s Ekaterinburg Theatre

Abstract

Humiliation is a basic fact of life for many of the characters who populate the plays and adaptations of Nikolai Kolyada. The central figures in his plays, often middle-aged women, endure shame, humiliation, and tremendous loss at the hands of unrelenting perpetrators. Looking briefly at Kolyada’s representations of Liubov from Cherry Orchard, Blanche from Streetcar Named Desire, and SHE from Kolyada’s original play Nezhnost’ (Tenderness), this article examines the director’s depiction of the downtrodden and brutalized woman in modern cultures of disposability and waste. While the violence addressed here is directed at women in particular, Kolyada’s battered women represent the disposability of individuals in the hands of absolute power in an era marked by forgetfulness. These depictions can be read in relation to the reemergence of a hypermasculine Russian nationalism as well as emergent global neoliberalism.