New Drama (Новая драма), an artistic movement that uses theater to speak about social problems, first gained traction in Russia’s regional centers in the early 1990s before storming Moscow’s theater scene. In this lecture, Title VIII Early Career Scholar Susanna Weygandt will discuss some of the findings from her forthcoming book, From Metaphor to Direct Speech: Contemporary Russophone Drama and Performance Theory (University of Wisconsin Press). She will also present an early version of her digital archive project which showcases activist Russian documentary drama within the broader context of theater for social change in Belarus and Ukraine. Preview the digital archive here: https://transnationaldocumentarydrama.com/