The Mock-Shakespeare by Les Podervianskyi: Overcoming Soviet Experience

Abstract

Shakespeare’s presence in the Soviet and early post-Soviet culture was ensured not only by translations, productions and general official appraisal, but also by travesty and mockery, which were typical of the underground cultural space. The paper considers the specificity of the Soviet Shakespeare appropriation with a special focus on its burlesque type. The case of the Ukrainian artist and playwright Les Podervianskyi, who employed Shakespeare’s plots and characters to mock Communist ideological clichés and stereotypes, is under study. The author aims at tracing the ways in which irony, mockery and burlesque remakes of the eternal classic literature undermine a range of destructive political and social discourses at various levels. Through the analysis of Shakespeare-based plays by Les Podervianskyi – Hamlet, or The Phenomenon of the Danish Katsapism and King Liter – the article highlights one of the main tendencies of the Soviet underground literature (that of mocking the gruesome reality) and specifies Podervianskyi’s unique attitude which was both antiSoviet and anti-Russian.

Keywords

• shakespeare
• hamlet
• king lear
• les poderviankyi
• travesty
• totalitarian discourse