Dr. phil. Kiril Ospovat

Scenarios of Power: Tragedy and Court Theater in Early Modern Russia

This project deals with neoclassical tragedy as a performative genre characteristic for Early Modern European court theater, inscribed into the overall system of courtly ritual. The starting point is the oeuvre of Aleksandr Sumarokov (1717–1777), the first Russian neoclassical dramatist and the founder of Russian-language court theater, research addresses general questions of social and cultural functioning of court theater, one of the crucial institutions of the pan-European absolutist “culture of power”. The research results were published under the title: Terror and Pity: Aleksandr Sumarokov and the Theater of Power in Elizabethan Russia, Boston. Academic Studies Press, 2016.

Ospovat, K. (2016) Terror and Pity: Aleksandr Sumarokov and the Theater of Power in Eliza­be­than Russia, Boston. Academic Studies Press.

Kiril Ospovat co-organized the DramaNet conference Dramatic Experience in November 2013.

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