Publisher's Synopsis
А. Е. Mardan is the most demanded playwright in Ukraine. The audience is not indifferent to the plays of this extraordinary author. There are social and public problems of the plays, which confirms the tendency of our time about the cultural situation, when there are all types of mass culture. The playwright touches upon the problems inherent in post-Soviet society, such as the destruction of collective utopias of mass consciousness due to political changes, the internal conflict between the stable ideas of the past and the new mentality. The plays reflect the stereotypes of mass consciousness and the problems of a society living at the crossroads of centuries. The idea, based on simulacra present in mass consciousness, is largely aimed at the post-Soviet addressee, to whom the mentality peculiar to A. Mardan's heroes is most understandable. We observe the juxtaposition of the world of reality and illusion in the behaviour of the heroes, and an example of the influence of theatre, theatricality and fiction on the human worldview and destiny. Metadramatism is noticeable in the plot of the plays and in various allusions and analogies, taking features of both classical and modernist conceptions of this technique.
