Following the publication of Sergei Davydov's debut novel, 'Springfield,' Freedom Letters introduces Davydov the playwright. His plays have repeatedly won prizes at drama competitions and are included in the repertoires of many theaters around the world.
The collection 'Five Plays about Freedom' includes stories of varying genres and forms. These include the one-man plays 'Kolya Against Everyone' and 'Border' (awarded a prize at the Echo of Lyubimovka anti-war play festival in Berlin). The postcolonial 'Republic' tells the story of Russian residents of Tajikistan who fled the civil war in the early 1990s. 'Let's Play' and 'How to Make a Zombie at Home' are teen action films where stories of love and coming-of-age emerge from the noisy adventure setting. What unites all these plays is the theme of confrontation.
Davydov's heroes really do find themselves 'against everyone,' but they don't just survive—they defend themselves and their freedom, resisting as best they can the world that is destroying them, no matter who it is expressed by: a despot grandmother, grotesque special agents, or the 'overwhelming majority' we now see everywhere:
It's strange to try to say something
when twenty-five percent of people
have lost seventy-five percent of their words
and are putting asterisks in place of the most important ones.
But the word is the final power,
and I will not give it up.'