Fiona Bell

My work explores the representation of domestic violence in modern Russian theater. Since the nineteenth century, the theater stage has been the quintessential space for “public” representations of “private” narratives. Because domestic violence is routinely figured as a “private” matter with little “public” significance—as it was in the Russian Parliament’s 2017 decision to decriminalize first offenses of family abuse—theater is a space uniquely able to refigure our understandings of this phenomenon. I am particularly interested in how dramatic genre affects the representation of domestic violence: from tragic visions (Othello), to comic ones (slapstick wife beating), to more ambiguous or anti-generic approaches. My interests also include Russian translations and adaptations of foreign theater.