Adaptation as interpretation: Petr Fomenko's Egyptian Nights

The chapter analyses Fomenko's 2002 play "Egyptian Nights" based on Alexander Pushkin's unfinished text and Valery Briusov's version of Pushkin's text. It is argued that Fomenko treats Pushkin's text as being open-ended and full of parodic touches. In this production, Fomenko presents himself as director and critic who departs from Soviet adaptations of Russian classical texts that were supposed to be didactical and ideologically sound. Instead of ideology, Fomenko promotes self-reflexivity: he engages the audience in a ludic game with Pushkin's canonical text in order to demonstrate to the audience that the process of meaning-making is ongoing. Fomenko's production embodies a playful attitude to classical literature and presents it as open-ended and polyphonic in the spirit of other Russian postmodernist practitioners who want to shift way from Soviet interpretations of Russian canonical texts, including Lev Dodin.