234
UDC 82.09-2:316.472.4  
UDC 316.472.4:82.09-2  
DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2022-1/234-249
The article examines the impact of social networks on modern theatre by looking at the 
case of drama transformation. Discussed are the peculiarities of reportage plays versus 
traditional plays, emphasising the various forms of so-called Facebook plays. The author 
shows that while Facebook plays have become a major feature of theatrical life in the 21
st
 
century, their proliferation has also revealed social networks’ negative effects on social 
communication. This has found its apt reflection in dramatic texts. The study concludes 
with an argument that although the impact of social networks on drama has of late 
tended to wane, the changes that have occurred in the structure of texts over the last 
decade or so appear to be largely irreversible.
Keywords: Facebook, plot decomposition, confession, non-communication
Hanna Veselovska is a theatre critic and scholar from Ukraine. She is the head of the 
Department of the Modern Art Research Institute at the National Academy of Arts of 
Ukraine. Her research and publication interests include modern theatre theory and 
Ukrainian theatrical avant-garde. She also teaches and writes extensively on the history 
and present-day of the Ukrainian theatre. She is an author of over 220 published works, 
including “Kyiv’s Multicultural Theatrical Life, 1917–1926” in Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant 
Experimentation, Toronto (2010); “On the Path to Innovation and Experiment: Ukrainian 
Theater in the first third of the 20th century” in Staging the Ukrainian Avant-garde of 
the 1910s and 1920s, New York (2015). Author of the expert studies “National Theatre 
Open to Debate” in East European Performing Arts Companion, Lublin–Warsaw (2016), “The 
Movement of Bodies: Gender Issues in Ukraine Avant-Garde Theatre” in Spaces and Stages 
of Avant-Garde Theatre in Central-Eastern Europe, Warsaw (2018). 
Among her recent books (all in Ukrainian) are The Twelve Productions by Les’ Kurbas 
(2005), The Theatrical Intersections in Kyiv: 1900–1910s. Theatrical Kyiv’s Modernism (2006), 
Ukrainian Theatrical Avant-garde (2010); Modern Theatrical Arts (2014); Maria Zankovetska 
National Academy Ukrainian Drama Theatre. Time and Fates (1917–1944), Part 1 (2016); 
Theatre of Mykola Sadovskyj (1907–1920) (2018); More than a Theatre: Ivan Franko National 
Theatre (2001–2012) (2019).
aveselovska@gmail.com

235
The 21
st
-Century Drama and the New Reality 
of Social Networks
Hanna Veselovska 
Modern Art Research Institute, National Academy of Arts of Ukraine
Introduction
The dominant role of social networks is commonly recognised these days as a major 
factor in human life. The kind of impact the networks have in most areas of our existence, 
from trade to politics, cannot be denied or undone. For example, one explanation for 
why thousands of people could get together so quickly and efficiently in a downtown 
square of the Ukrainian capital during the 2014 revolution is related to the SMS 
phenomenon. Text messages were sent out by those already present on this square to 
their relatives, friends and acquaintances. Despite the shutdown of public transport 
and blocked entrances to the capital, new flows of protesters continued to arrive. Their 
SMSes served as a kind of SOS signal and seemed to work almost flawlessly.
Another example – and unlike the first, even backed up by sociological research – is the 
considerable role that Facebook played in Ukraine during the 2019 election when the 
current Ukrainian government scored a stunning landslide victory in the race. Obviously, by 
the mid-2010s, texts from social networks, or what preceded them, gained magical power 
over the addressee and were able to stimulate complex social and political processes.
With social networks having become an inseparable, prominent feature of our lives these 
days, we feel their impact in practically every area, and theatre and drama are no exception. 
It is hardly possible now to establish who was the first to react to the phenomenon of 
social networks – theatre or drama? However, today, artistic adaptations of Facebook 
and other social media techniques are evident practically everywhere. Over the last two 
decades, the acceptance of social networks by the European drama has occurred at both 
the thematic and structural levels.
New as Forgotten Old
What we call new very often happens to be something that is just well-forgotten old. 
This banal observation must at least be accurate when using the experience of social 

236 networks in drama and theatre. After all, creating plays and performances outside 
the literary tradition, outside the rules, without relying on the theory of drama, is a 
distinctive feature of the avant-garde theatre of the 1920s. This is especially evident in 
the activities of the so-called Left Front of Art (LEF), an influential artistic association 
created by legendary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in which reportage, a stream of life 
impressions, was considered the basis of a dramatic text.
One of the LEF’s key postulates was the recognition of the alleged supremacy of the 
“literature of fact” over the literature of fiction. Fiction as such was declared untenable, 
a kind of “payment in counterfeit coins on the bills of reality”. Given that newspaper 
reports, chronicles and eyewitness accounts were considered the primary donor to 
the “literature of fact”, all this leads us to compare avant-garde pieces with the texts 
of verbatim and doc. theatre and the theatre of witnesses from the last third of the 
20
th
 and the early 21
st
 centuries. It is also noteworthy that, according to the influential 
LEF theorists Viktor Shklovsky and Osip Brik, the documentary or reportage nature 
of the texts conditioned the existence of such phenomena as “plot-lessness” and “plot 
decomposition”. Thus, Brik wrote the following:
Instead of plays that unfold psychological conflicts, instead of plot-based dramas, 
dramatisations appear on the stage more and more often, taking the form of reviews. 
Instead of a cohesiveness of action, a cohesiveness of intrigue, we have a sequence of 
separate scenes, often almost unrelated to each other. The central characters turn into 
observers who connect these separate scenes, and the viewer’s interest is not focused 
on them (“The Plot Decomposition” 226).
Playwriter Sergei Tretyakov (1892–1937) became one of the most active and 
consistent proponents of the notion of creating plays as the “literature of fact”. A 
close acquaintance of the avant-garde directors Igor Terentiev, Sergei Eisenstein 
and Vsevolod Meyerhold, he developed his own methodology for creating texts and 
focused on the practical implementation of ideas related to the “literature of fact”. 
Like other LEF members, Tretyakov believed that the main starting point for creating 
plays of a new type should be a newspaper chronicle, a report or a journalistic note, 
that is, everything that is written “right there on the spot”, as it were. According to 
Tretyakov, a documentary fact or a newspaper report ensured what he referred to as 
the utility of art. The momentary, short-lived information was to be processed with 
minimal time and effort spent, while the facts themselves were to be assembled under 
the thematic rather than plot principle.
Using this cliché, Tretyakov wrote his play Gas Masks, based on a newspaper report 
about an accident at the Ural Gas Plant. Its première, as directed by Sergei Eisenstein, 
took place in February 1924 in the workshop of a gas plant in Moscow. Among 
Tretyakov’s other works of the same type is a libretto of the political show Do you 

237 hear, Moscow!, staged by Eisenstein, and a nine-part “event” eloquently called Roar 
China!. Quite tellingly, the latter show was built on actual developments the author 
had himself collected while in China in 1920. Vasilij Fedorov staged it at the Meyerhold 
Theatre in 1926.
A Product of Social Networks
Unlike documentary plays – which are so visibly present in the theatrical process 
since around the last decade of the 20
th
 century –  the idea of   “plot decomposition” 
has remained unclaimed for quite a long time. It began to be actively used again only 
with the advent of Facebook plays of the reportage type. Among playwrights with 
experience in documentary theatre, the magic of text coming from Facebook has been 
quickly perceived as a signal to master a new dramatic technique: they would collect 
Facebook texts and compile something like a doc. drama from them.
The result was a product created according to the principle of a message feed around 
events to which the characters react. The respective texts, hereafter referred to as 
Facebook plays, were invariably constructed on reports or testimonies taken from 
a social network – rather than newspapers, as was the case in the 1920s – but, as 
before, with almost no plot to adhere to, e.g., on a thematic basis. While such Facebook 
plays can be found in the drama of many European countries, we focus our attention 
on the Ukrainian experience.
The emergence of the first Facebook plays in Ukraine is associated with the 2014 
events best known as the Maidan Revolution. The link here is plain to see because 
social networks brought the freshest and most concerning information about 
those events prompting people to join the protests. This is, for example, how 
the play The Diary of Maidan was born by its author Natalya Vorozhbit, perhaps 
the most famous of all modern Ukrainian playwrights active on the scene. The 
work on the play, done within the framework of the documentary project, Rapid 
Response Theatre, commenced literally right after the capital Kyiv registered the 
very first clash between the protesters and the police. At that point, Vorozhbit and 
director Andrey May quickly initiated a collection of documentary material and 
eyewitness accounts.
As the main artistic and social tasks for the future play and performance were to 
recreate the atmosphere of the events unfolding at the Independence Square (Maidan), 
the authors needed to hear and present the voices of those participating in the events. 
Ultimately, what emerged from hearing such voices (through interviews and Facebook 
posts) was a graphic, highly emotional narrative, the dramatic construction of which 

238 was based on the chronology of events. This was the chronology of bloodshed, 
beatings and deaths, and it became the main plot of The Diary of Maidan, a product 
compiled entirely from the collected micro-stories.
Apart from lacking a plot in the traditional sense, The Diary of Maidan had no 
principal hero or heroine among its characters. The play, staged at the Ivan Franko 
National Theatre in Kyiv and directed by Andrey May, featured six equally male and 
female actors. They each emerged from the crowd, told their micro-story and then 
disappeared. This principle of multiple heroes who are “dissolved” in the events has 
become key for other reportage plays about the Maidan Revolution.
The Diary of Maidan was also shown at several international theatre festivals. However, 
the focus of attention there was drawn to the subject matter of performance. Rather 
than the technique of creating a dramatic text, the latter basically represented a 
compilation of Facebook posts from various Maidan protesters. Those posts became 
their “direct” speech in the performance (Korzeniowska-Bihun “Kilka słów” 10).
A few more similar plays, plot-less but united by topical themes, appeared in the years 
after the Maidan Revolution. The most typical of these were We, Maidan by Nadiya 
Symchych and a “street mystery” called Maidan Inferno, or On the Other Side of Hell by 
Neda Nezhdana. With both plays created by using documentary sources, the function 
of the text here was therefore also delegated to Facebook posts.
In her play, We, Maidan, Symchych collected activists’ testimonies from social 
networks of the period (dating to the 2014 winter), so her characters spoke with the 
voices of actual Maidan participants: they were students, journalists, doctors, priests, 
volunteers and other ordinary citizens. Born from such dramatic material was a highly 
ascetic performance to be shown at a Kyiv theatre called Koleso (Wheel). On a small 
stage, in proximity to the viewer and surrounded by items associated with Maidan – a 
barrel, burnt tyres, gas masks, shields and helmets – the actors voiced testimonies 
from Facebook.
In Maidan Inferno, there are two groups of characters: some are personified characters, 
such as a climber, a student, a security guard, a nurse, a musician, a journalist and 
a seminarian, while others are a Facebook chorus of voices. The real actions of the 
former are conditioned by the latter. Before each new scene with the main characters, 
a choir of masked Facebook participants arises, uttering anonymous monologues 
from the social networks. That way, by assigning to the Facebook choir the function 
of a commentator on the unfolding events, the play’s author illustrates the impact the 
social messaging must have had on the protesters’ decision-making.

239
Facebook Plays as Intimate Confessions
In addition to Facebook plays of the reportage type – where the main thing for the 
playwright is to collect peoples’ responses and information on a specific topic – 
the social network prompted the appearance of dramatic texts constructed on the 
principle of one person’s messages on their Facebook feed. Stories about oneself, one’s 
family, psychological problems and intimate experiences – in a word, confessions 
that were incognito-published on the network became a source of inspiration for 
authors of this type of Facebook plays. As a rule, such plays are associated with 
acute traumatic experiences, which, thanks to a confessional technique taken from 
Facebook, maximise the intimacy of the issue.
Content-wise, there seem to be two main ways or approaches for playwrights to use 
the Facebook material and, on its basis, build a dramatic text. The first approach arises 
from the situation when there is a domination of a specific social or political issue 
that filters, as it were, through the characters. One such issue that proves particularly 
acute to Ukraine is the war in the east, in Donbas, a theme indescribably painful to so 
many local people. The war makes our characters take off and leave their homes, part 
with their loved ones, and learn to adjust to or almost grow into a new reality.
The best examples of this approach are the plays Vitalik-Ulysses by Vitaly Chensky 
and Mother Not According to Gorky by Lena Lyagushonkova, both writers themselves 
hailing from Donbas. Chensky is a native of the city of Mariupol on the Sea of   Azov, from 
where he left for the capital Kyiv sometime before the war. And Lena Lyagushonkova 
is originally from Lugansk, having fled from this city after it came under the control 
of the Russia-backed separatists. Both began their dramatic careers in 2017 and have 
recently become repertoire writers and in-demand screenwriters.
Chensky’s play, a sarcastic story about a guy from provincial Mariupol who moved to 
Kyiv, was composed as a dialogue with himself. The hero kind of splits here into two 
characters, each of which embodies a certain hypostasis of the author, in fact, Vitaly 
Chensky himself. In various guises, he tries to arrange his life in different ways and 
reacts differently to political events as he reveals them on Facebook. Two characters 
act as two nicknames of one hero, who, hiding behind different Facebook names, 
writes about his impressions in a foreign city and the political events that he neither 
understands nor accepts.
As a result, in the play directed by Maksym Holenko, we can see the interaction of two 
performers (Veselovska “Dead and Alive” 161). These are deeply individual characters, 
both recognisable as typical representatives of the 2010s generation. The young 
Ukrainians in question have yet to define who they are and tend to aggressively reject 
everything imposed on them by their parents and the school, the establishment and 

240 politicians. There was a special Facebook hero with several nicknames, multiplying 
himself depending on the situation and the social circle.
Lyagushonkova’s play is a dramatic saga about her post-Soviet childhood years in 
Luhansk, where she still has many living relatives. The very title of the play, Mother 
Not According to Gorky, contains irony and sarcasm directed against Maxim Gorky, the 
pillar of Soviet drama, whose works were considered exemplary from the perspective 
of social issues. Therefore, the mother in Lyagushonkova’s play is an anti-heroine. 
Her main features are inertia and complaisance since this woman, much like the 
playwright’s real mother, is not capable of decisive actions in order to break out of the 
wretched backwater.
This play comprises a series of Lyagushonkova’s own Facebook posts filled with 
expressed indignation. In the posts, she reacts to the recklessness of her relatives, 
their dependence on Soviet stereotypes and their habits of living miserably and 
acting on the orders from above. Lyagushonkova wrote the play as a story in the first-
person singular. However, the reception of Facebook posts allowed Lyagushonkova to 
distance herself from the events that had taken place in her family.
Her Facebook posts look like random notes of a gradually maturing teenager and are 
not logically connected by a series of events. At the same time, the process of growing 
up and understanding who you and others are – as presented through Facebook 
revelations – makes it possible to keep the chronology. Here are the scattered 
reactions of a girl who, with every move, gains more and more of that understanding 
and, in the end, knows a lot more about herself and the world than the adults around 
her. In a sense, such reactions provide a three-dimensional picture of the degradation 
of an individual family and the entire industrial region.
Other plays that used the Facebook resource and design were created outside of direct 
connection with political events. For example, the starting point for two playwrights 
who created a composition called Othello/ Facebook, Pavlo Arje and Maryna 
Smilyanets, was – in addition to the Facebook principle – an assertion that there had 
been a particular collective author hiding under the name of William Shakespeare. 
In working on the dramaturgical basis of Othello/ Facebook together with the actors 
of the Golden Gate Theatre, the playwrights acted as compilers of other people’s 
messages. The composition consisted of Facebook texts from actors-participants in 
the play who were actually representing themselves on stage.
In this case, Shakespeare’s masterpiece was used only as an impulse for performers 
to recall and tell the audience about some annoying moments from their own life, the 
moments that stimulated them to take decisive actions, good or bad. The real episodes 
that they recalled and then talked about on social networks were associated with one 

241 of the concepts behind the original Othello play – a feeling of being undeservedly hurt 
and the envy towards a more successful rival. Everyone was choosing something of 
their own: a story about the death of a father who did not pay attention to his son, 
participating in a provincial beauty contest or the first student party.
Apparently made with a high degree of sincerity, the actors’ recollection of their 
intimate monologues demonstrates the pain, wretchedness and, ultimately, the 
insignificance of all those grievances that had tormented them for years. What was 
a serious psychological problem for them is now overcome during the game. Indeed, 
here in Othello/ Facebook, each of the actors represents both themselves and their 
attitude to one’s own suffering, which he or she caricatures.
The Othello/ Facebook staged by director Stas Zhyrkov at the Golden Gate Theatre 
is compositionally and visually similar to a social network page. For the viewer to 
understand that all this is happening in the world of Facebook, the actors are constantly 
changing their masks. It is as if they exist in many faces and are imperceptible, 
hiding behind all sorts of masking nicknames but suddenly popping up with their 
revelations. Then, even more suddenly, they “drop out” of their roles as if to suggest 
that the audience should perceive the theatre as a different system of coordinates, 
something where the images are illusory and real at the same time – almost like in 
social networks.
The success of Othello/ Facebook inspired playwright Pavlo Arje and director Stas 
Zhyrkov to create another play based on posts from the social network. This time 
around, they chose to focus, as in reportage plays, on a single topical issue – school 
bullying, which became a plot-formative theme for the play Class staged in Kyiv at 
the Left Bank Theatre. However, unlike Othello/ Facebook, where each of the actors 
extracted a personal story related to resentment, envy or jealousy from his or her 
Facebook, here the future performers were asked to initiate a Facebook flash mob.
In preparing for the performance, the actors needed to describe on Facebook a 
documentary story about bullying in school. The story that sounded particularly 
colourful and persuasive was selected to be the main plot, while the actress telling it 
assumed the role of the main character in the performance. Such in-depth attention to 
a specific fate contrasted with the constant flickering of scattered real-life episodes in 
Othello/ Facebook and, as a result, made Class effectively the venue for a serious and 
profound discussion of the school bullying issue.
Thanks to what became a highly personal account and essentially a study into the pupils’ 
relationships with parents and teachers in one randomly selected class, the authors 
foregrounded the issue of school conservatism in general. As the play aptly showed, 
bullying, like any other form of violence, remains unpunished wherever the society fails 

242 to address the problem continuing instead to stick to obsolete clichés and outdated rules. 
In order to point to all of this, various elements, objects and symbols of the typical school 
reality filled in the scene during the innovative performance: a shabby carpet, a traditional 
solemn line-up of pupils with the participation of invited politicians and other influential 
guests, a banal full-of-pathos speech by the headmaster.
Viber-Tinder Plays and Social Non-Communication
The so widely spread and highly collective “revitalisation” of Facebook on stage is 
a remarkably indicative social development. Crucially, it seems to demonstrate how 
spontaneous personal emotions that overwhelm social networks have begun to rule 
society as a whole and how they have become such a dominant force and pushed many 
of its users towards social aggression. Moreover, in that way, all the collected personal 
mini-stories become an occasion to talk not only about the hidden and explicit 
psychological problems of an individual but also about the issue of manipulation in 
social networks. As a phenomenon of overwhelming real human communication, 
social networks have become a subject matter in dramatic texts.
A good example of this can be traced in the next two plays, where events unfold 
around such social networks as Viber and Tinder. The works in question, 
Gorka (Hill) by Russian playwright Alexei Zhitkovsky and Tinderland by Irina 
Serebryakova from Ukraine, are quite traditional in form. Each of the two plays is 
based on everyday stories about problems that arise from the unsettled personal 
lives and invariably complicated intimate experiences of the main characters. 
In both, there are shiny, bright-looking heroines of decidedly action type who 
happen to find themselves in various conflict situations, which is a fairly common 
theme for the “good-old” traditional drama. And all that distinguishes these plays 
from the texts of the previous generation is the actors’ active involvement in the 
mentioned social networks, with the help of which they try to solve their personal 
and career problems.
Because the heroine of Gorka, a young woman named Nastya, works in a 
kindergarten and is forced to communicate constantly via Viber with the parents 
of her children, the author abundantly saturates the text with quotes from her 
correspondence on the network. The endless stream of messages keeps Nastya in 
constant tension, but no one comments on them in any way. It is simply reproduced 
as a visual aid of how emotional phrases tend to replace real feelings and actions 
and how online manipulations lead people to overlook objective facts and believe 
fakes instead.

243 By capturing the heroine’s obvious dependence on correspondence in Viber, the 
playwright thereby diagnoses not only the influence of the social network but 
also suggests that the creation of various groups on the network deprives their 
participants of normal communication and frank discussions. Moreover, as he weaves 
Viber messages into the plot, Zhitkovsky seems to point out that social networks are 
often used as a mechanism for intimidation, surveillance, suppression of will, and 
psychological assault.
In creating her Tinderland, Serebryakova clearly opted to use screenshots from 
her friends’ smartphones registered on the Tinder network. The play’s heroine 
here is a girl who naively hopes to arrange her personal life through Tinder. 
However, in the process of dating, she constantly encounters fictitious names and 
invented biographies, lies that remain absolutely unpunished, and a desire to take 
advantage of the gullibility of others. As a result, the network that the heroine 
and her friends have become so infatuated with turns out to be hugely dangerous 
territory, full of hypocrisy and deceit, where connections are destroyed rather 
than created.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, both Gorka and Tinderland conclude on a high note, 
as the real life depicted there does win over the phantom world of social networks. 
The networks’ imaginary power is undermined by stalemate life situations, such as 
a loss of the loved one or a dangerous illness. That way, the authors break, as it were, 
the magic circle of characters’ dependence on social networks and insist on their 
primary communicative functions.
Conclusion
It appears as though the principle of Facebook posts as a means to build dramatic 
material has all but exhausted itself by now. At first, when giving preference to 
documentary plays based on Facebook messages, the playwrights must have 
reasonably considered that this was an interesting new way to objectively convey 
the atmosphere of real events and public moods. But what seems to have happened 
next was that Facebook plays fell victim to the social networks’ transformation from a 
communicator into a kind of platform for public confessions.
At that, the nature of Facebook revelations prompted the creation of texts where 
those confessions would become increasingly infectious and “collective”, with 
multiplying characters hiding under various nicknames. So much so that eventually, 
the same playwrights began to uncover and highlight issues that were often caused 
by none other than social networks themselves. What had initially helped them better 

244 understand and reveal their personality became, over time, a tool for manipulation, if 
not an exercise in social non-communication.
Even so, such a radical change of form in drama has made its mark – it has led to 
the emergence of a substantially new hero on stage while transforming the nature 
of characters’ communication amongst themselves and modifying the dialogue 
structure of drama. The latter features have proved surprisingly resilient, as they did 
not disappear with the loss of interest in Facebook. What takes place as a result is an 
effective, highly productive exchange between the social reality and the artistic reality 
of drama, something that has already been serving as a significant focus of attention 
to drama theorists (Semiotics of Drama and Theatre).

245
Literature
Brik, Osip. “The Plot Decomposition / Literature of Fact.” The First Collection of 
Materials from LEF Workers, edited by N. Chuzhak, Zakharow, 2000, pp. 226–228. 
Korzeniowska-Bihun, Anna. “Kilka słów o współczesnym dramacie ukraińskim / 
Nowy dramat ukraiński.” W oczekiwaniu na Majdan. Tom 1. Warszawa, 2015, pp. 
7–11.
Schmid, Herta and Aloysius Van Kesteren, eds. Semiotics of Drama and Theatre. 
New Perspectives in the Theory of Drama and Theatre. John Benjamins Publishing 
Company, 1985. 
Veselovska, Hanna. “Dead and Alive in the Digital Technologies Theatre / Artistic 
Culture Topical Issues.” Annual Scientific Journal, vol.14, 2018, pp. 160–162.

246
Prispevek preučuje vpliv družabnih omrežij na sodobno gledališče s tem, ko razišče 
primer transformacije drame. Razpravlja o posebnostih reportažnih dram v primerjavi s 
tradicionalnimi, pri tem še posebej poudarja različne oblike t. i. facebook drame. Avtorica 
pokaže, da so facebook drame v enaindvajsetem stoletju postale poglavitna značilnost 
gledališkega življenja, vendar pa je njihov razcvet razkril tudi negativni učinek omrežij na 
družbeno komunikacijo, kar se ustrezno odraža tudi v dramskih besedilih. Prispevek sklene 
s trditvijo, da se zdijo spremembe, do katerih je v zadnjem desetletju prišlo v strukturi 
besedil, v veliki meri nepovratne, pa čeprav vpliv družabnih omrežij na dramatiko v zadnjem 
času slabi. 
Ključne besede: facebook, dekompozicija fabule, izpoved, pomanjkanje komunikacije
Hanna Veselovska je gledališka kritičarka in raziskovalka iz Ukrajine. Je vodja oddelka 
na Raziskovalnem institutu za sodobno umetnost pri Nacionalni akademiji umetnosti 
v Ukrajini. Njena raziskovalna in publicistična zanimanja obsegajo sodobno gledališko 
teorijo in ukrajinsko gledališko avantgardo. Med drugim tudi poučuje in intenzivno piše 
o zgodovini ter trenutnem stanju ukrajinskega gledališča. Objavila je že več kot 220 
avtorskih del, med drugimi prispevka »Multikulturno gledališko življenje v Kijevu, 1917–1926« 
v knjigi Modernizem v Kijevu: zmagoslavje eksperimentiranja, Toronto (2010), in »Na poti k 
inovaciji in eksperimentu: ukrajinsko gledališče v prvi tretjini dvajsetega stoletja« v knjigi 
Uprizarjanje ukrajinske avantgarde v desetih in dvajsetih letih, New York (2015). Je avtorica 
strokovnih raziskav »Odprta debata o narodnem gledališču« v Vodiču po vzhodnoevropski 
performativni umetnosti, Lublin–Varšava (2016), in »Gibanje teles: vprašanja spola v 
ukrajinskem avantgardnem gledališču« v monografiji Prostori in odri avantgardnega 
gledališča v srednji in vzhodni Evropi, Varšava (2018). Med novejšimi knjigami (vse je objavila 
v ukrajinščini) omenimo Dvanajst produkcij Lesa Kurbasa (2005), Gledališka presečišča v 
Kijevu: 1900–1910: kijevski gledališki modernizem (2006), Ukrajinska gledališka avantgarda 
(2010), Sodobna gledališka umetnost (2014), Ukrajinsko narodno akademsko dramsko 
gledališče Marije Zankovetske: čas in usode (1917–1944), 1. del (2016), Gledališče Mikole 
Sadovskega (1907–1920) (2018) in Več kot gledališče: Narodno gledališče Ivana Franka 
(2001–2012) (2019).
aveselovska@gmail.com

247
Dramatika enaindvajsetega stoletja in nova 
resničnost družbenih omrežij
Hanna Veselovska 
Raziskovalni institut za sodobno umetnost, Nacionalna akademija umetnosti Ukrajine 
Prispevek preučuje vpliv družabnih omrežij na sodobno gledališče s tem, ko pretresa 
posebnosti reportažnih dram v primerjavi s tradicionalnimi, pri čemer pa še posebej 
poudarja različne oblike t. i. facebook drame. Čeprav lahko take facebook drame 
najdemo v dramatiki različnih evropskih držav, in to tako na tematski kot na strukturni 
ravni, se v prispevku osredotočamo na ukrajinsko izkušnjo. 
Dandanes se z umetniškimi adaptacijami tehnik s facebooka in drugih družabnih 
medijev srečujemo tako rekoč vsepovsod. A ob tem se je vredno spomniti, da je bilo 
ustvarjanje dram zunaj okvirjev literarne tradicije, zunaj okvirjev pravil, značilno 
že za avantgardno gledališče v dvajsetih letih 20. stoletja. To je še posebej očitno pri 
dejavnosti Leve fronte umetnosti (LEF), kjer je za temelj dramskega besedila veljala 
reportaža, tok življenjskih vtisov. Eden od ključnih postulatov LEF je bil prepoznati 
domnevno večvrednost »literature dejstev«, se pravi literature, ki bi jo ustvarjali s 
pomočjo časopisnih reportaž, kronik in pričevanj očividcev. Po trditvah nekaterih 
vplivnih LEF-ovih teoretikov naj bi dokumentarna narava tako nastalih besedil 
pogojevala obstoj pojavov, kakršna sta »nefabulativnost« in »dekompozicija fabule«.  
Po vzponu in padcu avantgardnega gledališča v prvi tretjini dvajsetega stoletja je 
ideja dekompozicije fabule dokaj dolgo ostala brez sledilcev. Ponovno je postala 
aktualna šele s prihodom t. i. facebook dram reportažnega tipa. Dramski pisci, ki so 
imeli izkušnje z dokumentarnim gledališčem, so hitro dojeli čarobnost besedil, ki so 
izvirala s facebooka, kot znak, da je treba osvojiti to novo dramsko tehniko: začeli 
so zbirati besedila s facebooka in iz njih zlagali nekaj podobnega dokumentarnim 
dramam. Končni rezultat so bila besedila, napisana v skladu z načeli delovanja vira 
sporočil in na podlagi določenih dogodkov, na katere se dramske osebe odzivajo. 
Taka besedila, ki so jih poimenovali facebook drame, so brez izjeme temeljila na 
poročilih ali pričevanjih, na katera so naleteli na družabnih omrežjih (namesto v 
časopisih, kot se je dogajalo v dvajsetih letih 20. stoletja), vendar pa, tako kot prej, 
niso imela tako rekoč nobene omembe vredne fabule, ki bi se je lahko držali, na 
primer na podlagi tematike.

248 Nastanek prvih facebook dram v Ukrajini je povezan z dogodki iz leta 2014, ki jih 
danes poznamo pod imenom majdanska revolucija. Delo na drami Majdanski dnevnik 
Natalije Jorožbit se je, na primer, začelo dobesedno takoj potem, ko so v glavnem mestu 
Kijevu zabeležili prve spopade med protestniki in policijo. Še nekaj podobnih dram, 
sicer brez fabule, ki pa jih druži skupna tematika, se je pojavilo v letih, ki so sledila 
majdanski revoluciji: Mi, Majdan Nadje Simčič ter Majdanski inferno ali Na drugi strani 
pekla Nede Neždane. Obe drami sta nastali s pomočjo dokumentarnih virov, funkcija 
besedila je bila tudi tu potemtakem delegirana na facebook objave.
Poleg facebook dram reportažnega tipa, kjer je bila glavna naloga dramatika, da je 
zbral odzive ljudi in informacije o določeni temi, so družabna omrežja spodbudila tudi 
pojav dramskih besedil, ki so zgrajena po načelu sporočil ene same osebe na facebook 
strani. To so zgodbe o samem sebi, o nekogaršnji družini, o psiholoških težavah in 
intimnih doživetjih, skratka, gre za izpovedi, ki so bile inkognito objavljene na omrežju 
in so avtorjem takih facebook dram postale vir navdiha. Plod takega ustvarjanja so 
bila besedila, v katerih so izpovedi postajale vedno bolj nalezljive in »kolektivne«, z 
vedno več liki, ki so se skrivali pod različnimi vzdevki. In tako se je pojavil tudi lik, ki 
bi ga lahko imenovali »facebook junak«, se pravi nekdo, ki uporablja različne vzdevke 
in se multiplicira glede na potrebe situacije.
Praviloma so bile take drame povezane z akutnimi travmatičnimi doživetji, kar 
maksimira intimnost teme zaradi uporabe izpovedne tehnike, ki je prevzeta s 
facebooka. Primer, ki to potrjuje, je vojna v Donbasu, zaradi katere dramski liki 
zapuščajo domove, se poslavljajo od ljubljenih, se učijo prilagajanja na novo resničnost 
ali se celo zrastejo z njo. Najboljša primera takega pristopa sta drami Vitalik-Ulysses 
Vitalija Čenskoja in pa Mati, ampak ne po Gorkem Lene Ljagušonkove. Oba avtorja 
prihajata iz Donbasa. 
Še druge drame, ki so prav tako uporabljale facebook vire in oblikovanje, so nastale 
brez neposredne navezave na politične dogodke. Ko sta delala na dramaturški 
podlagi za predstavo Othello/facebook, sta Pavlo Arje in Marina Smiljanec skupaj z 
igralci prevzela funkcijo zbirateljev sporočil ljudi. V tem primeru je Shakespearova 
mojstrovina služila zgolj kot impulz izvajalcem, da so si priklicali v spomin in nato 
občinstvu poročali o kakšnem trenutku, ki jih je spodbudil, da so ravnali odločno. 
Posledično so tudi facebook drame padle v past preobrazbe družabnih omrežij iz 
komunikacijskih sredstev v nekakšne platforme za javno izpovedovanje.
Čeprav so postale facebook drame poglavitna značilnost gledališkega življenja v 
enaindvajsetem stoletju, pa lahko zasledimo tudi bogato bero bolj tradicionalnih 
besedil, ki razkrivajo negativni učinek omrežij na družbeno komunikacijo. Takšne 
igre skušajo prikazati, kako spontana osebna čustva, ki preplavljajo družabna 
omrežja, vedno bolj obvladujejo družbo kot celoto in postajajo tako dominantna sila, 

249 da mnoge uporabnike tirajo v agresivnost. Ker jih zaznavajo kot pojav, ki si podreja 
resnično človeško komunikacijo, so družabna omrežja postala samostojna vsebinska 
snov dramskih besedil.
Prispevek se konča s trditvijo, da se zdijo spremembe, do katerih je v strukturi 
besedil prišlo v zadnjem desetletju, v veliki meri nepovratne, čeprav vpliv družabnih 
omrežij na dramatiko v zadnjem času slabi. A kljub temu je radikalna sprememba 
v dramski formi pustila neizbrisen pečat, privedla je do pojava bistveno nove vrste 
junaka na odru, obenem pa preobrazila naravo komuniciranja med dramskimi liki in 
modificirala dialoško strukturo drame.