Sentyabr'.doc, a documentary play by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov, in the context of empathic traumatization

This article examines the techniques employed by documentary playwrights Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov in their play Sentyabr'.doc [September.doc] to create an atmosphere of contradiction and tension. The analysis focuses on the image of the Other, which can be interpreted in various ways and is perceived as a method for generating the work's affective environment. The Other in the play is a character involved in the tragic events in Beslan on September 1, 2004. Furthermore, the Other is the very principle of character selection, which presents the tragedy from multiple, polarized viewpoints that do not coalesce into dialogue, instead forming a cacophony of voices. The representation of traumatic experience in the play produces a reverse effect - the working-through of the trauma of terrorism as a collective one. By transmitting this "shared" trauma, the playwrights stimulate a new surge of emotions, compelling the audience not only to displace it (by reflecting on the impasses of dialogue) but also to juxtapose the events in the play with the current state of reality. Following an analysis of the perspectives within the play, the conclusion is drawn that all 77 online comments are intended to illustrate individual reactions to the events. The multiplication of speaking subjects scales the tragedy from private family grief to a discussion of political and sensitive social topics. The play is built on "surges of tension," where voices within the virtual world report on the tragedy of a real cultural dialogue, testifying to the guilt of everyone included in the text or the production. In the author's opinion, the perspective of the outsider deserves particular attention - it is a significant affective point that generates dissonance related to the understanding of responsibility. Another distinct affective element is the zero-position of the playwrights: by arranging the comments in a specific order, they seemingly self-efface. However, the concentration of the authorial voice is still discernible precisely in the compositional technique of alternating (surges of) remarks, which not only voice different positions but also convey different intonations and linguistic registers: coarse, aggressive, laden with profanity; insidiously calm, using lofty lexicon to heroicize criminal actions; emotional, sympathetic, outraged; (in)sin-cerely indifferent; naively detached, yet precisely hitting the mark. The documentary play Sentyabr'.doc speaks less about the threat of terrorism and more about a problem that is unlikely to ever resolve itself. Throughout the centuries, it has been the cause of global conflicts - this is the problem of dialogue, in which it is crucial to listen, hear, and accept the Other. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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