Galimova Margarita Ramilevna – postgraduate student at the Department of Foreign Literature of the Higher School of Foreign Philology and Intercultural Communication named after I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia
The play by the modern American playwright Don Nigro touches on the theme of artistic search: the personality of Tolstoy is considered by the author in the context of Russian writer’s contradictory views on life and art. The idea of defining art as a system of endless reinterpretations is embodied by the postmodernist playwright using the metaphor of a mirror labyrinth, which he named in the afterword to the play. In the course of analysis we have identified binary oppositions mirroring each other in the play: “Youth – Old Age”, “Man – Woman”, “Tolstoy – King Lear”, “Artist – Moralist”, “Art – Non-Art”. Nigro created a field for simultaneous perception of different time points, as well as the illusion of objectivity in the act of creativity, while subjectivizing Tolstoy’s biography and worldview.
postmodernism; American drama; Russian classics; Shakespeare; King Lear; postmodern game