S_UCHILISCHA (Queen Bitch)

The title of Andrei Ivanov's play, who is a young playwright from Belorussia and author of a few resonant plays on social topics, contains a play-upon-words hinting that the main character is an ordinary vocational training school student who at the same time possesses unbridled female nature. In the daytime the girl goes to school, in the evenings she works in a fish shop and takes care of her paralyzed father. Once she falls in love with her philosophy teacher, and that’s the beginning of a realistic, although a blood-filled story about unequal love, the social ladder and human villainy. Ivanov’s play was presented in the autumn of 2017 at the Lyubimovka Young Playwrights’ Festival and immediately became popular around the country, illustrating a new cycle of interest to pungent drama. Director Semyon Serzin, graduate of Veniamin Filshtinsky’s course, a St.Petersburg teacher who is a great master of making a text acquire a new fresh intonation, gave main roles to the characters’ peers – recent graduates of Evgeniy Pisarev’s course at the Russian Academy of Theatre Art (GITIS). The concurrence of moods and ages gives “S_Uchilischa (Queen Bitch)” the energy of a personal statement. And the cruel lovestory of an “intellectual” and a chavette becomes our very own personal problem.