Role of narrative in modern Russian drama

The research aims to answer the question: why is the role of storytelling increasing in the plays of young authors of the 2020s, rather than the showing that is appropriate for drama? The paper examines the genesis of drama narrativization in the 1990s-2010s (in the plays of Yevgeny Grishkovets, Nikolay Kolyada, Oleg Bogayev, etc.), traces the history of the issue in literary studies and criticism, and conducts a textual analysis of Polina Korotych’s play “Street” (2022) using the methods of modern narratology. The scientific novelty of the research lies in determining the specifics of narrativity in contemporary drama. The theoretical significance of the work is in applying the narratological analysis methodology to a modern dramatic text. As a result, it was found that contemporary drama often moves away from both showing-performativity and narrative as plot. The new narrativity of contemporary drama manifests itself in the fact that the play often turns into a narrative act from the perspective of the author or the characters. The events in the plays of Yevgeny Grishkovets, Dmitry Danilov, Polina Korotych, Olga Potapova, etc. become mental, not physical actions. The focus shifts to the verbalization of narration; the intrigue of the word becomes central in the reception of such plays. Similar phenomena are observed in other genres of contemporary literature, but drama is at the forefront of the modern literary process.