Specificity of monodrama discourse

The discourse of the modern monodrama is a mimetic representation of performatives, because heroes do not have the status of a narrator, although they may talk about past situations in their monologues. The point is that, as a rule, in plays-monologues there is no temporal and psychological distance between the described event and the describing instance. The communicative intention of the speaking subject in the monodrama is not limited to the description of a chain of situations. The monologues of the female characters in the plays «Pishmashka», «Nosferatu», «Where… from, where… to, why» by N. Kolyada and «Natasha’s Dream» by Ya. Pulinovich have an appellative effectiveness. However, there is a fundamental difference in addressing this intention. The play by Ya. Pulinovich shows the situation of a trial, and the reader/viewer is allotted the role of a jury or a judge to whom the heroine appeals in her defense speech. In the plays by N. Kolyada the heroines become implicit addressees themselves (the explicit addressees - a cat, an answering machine, an imaginary stage director - are present, but they cannot enter into adialogue). Going through the traumatic situations, the heroines and trying to convince themselves that they deserve a better life. Presented in the play «Hands» by D. Bogoslavsky is a different modality of performative discourse: the verbalization of the decision making process connected with the hero’s self-determination. In this case the logical consequence of a character’s speech acts becomes a physical act (suicide). The heroes of the plays by E. Grishkovets («How I Ate a Dog», «Dreadnoughts», «Contemporaneously») also ask themselves the question of self-identification, but their verbalized mental action is connected with the process of the hero’s cognition of himself and of the laws of life.

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