For World Theatre Day 2021 we speak to Fraser Grace, author of BLISS, forthcoming in publication from Methuen
Fraser Grace’s new play is based on The River Potudan, a short story by Andrey Platonov (1899-1951), and was rapturously received at the Platonov International Festival in Voronezh in 2019. The play’s publication this month marks the seventieth anniversary of Platonov’s death from tuberculosis, and almost 100 years since the events depicted in Platonov’s story.
BLISS tells of a young couple, Nikita and Lyuba, trying to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of complete social collapse. No easy task this, as fear of ‘the fever’, and a terrifying famine compete to finish what war has begun. But Platonov believes even damaged people can, eventually, make a new world…
To mark World Theatre Day 2021, we speak to Fraser Grace about the challenges of adapting and translating works, as well as its reception in Russia and its journey from stage to page.
‘Reading Platonov, one gets a sense of the relentless, implacable absurdity built into the language and with each utterance, that absurdity deepens’ -- Joseph Brodsky.
‘…preserve(s) the unique flavor of Platonov’s voice, its slightly absurd and multi-layered quality…...Cracking the soul and psychology of Platonov’s characters … to show a love story anyone could relate to.’ -- Moe! News, Voronezh.
‘... a fiercely intelligent writer and this is a gripping play’, -- Lyn Gardner, The Guardian on Fraser Grace’s The Lifesavers.
Fraser Grace’s best-known play Breakfast with Mugabe won the John Whiting Award for Best Play and was premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company and revived in the UK and the USA. More recently, Always Orange - about living through a terrorist attack on a major city - helped to relaunch The Other Place, the RSC’s base for new writing. Other plays include Perpetua (Verity Bargate Award, Best Play); Gifts of War; Who Killed Mr Drum? (with Sylvester Stein); Frobisher’s Gold; The Lifesavers; King David, Man of Blood; Kalashnikov in the Woods by the Lake. All are published by Oberon Books. The latest, BLISS, based on a short story by the Russian writer Andrey Platonov and premiered in Voronezh, Russia, is his first play to be published by Methuen.
Fraser is co-author with Clare Bayley of Playwriting: A Writers’ and Authors’ Companion published by Bloomsbury and currently co-directs Cambridge University’s MSt in Writing for Performance. He is a consultant Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, and a member of the Writers Guild of Great Britain.
During the first coronavirus lockdown, Fraser established the wordcage - a new website offering poetry by himself and others in text and recordings. A weekly blog, and an occasional series of interviews with guest writers called SHED Talks are also posted on the site.