| Abstract: | The present article contends that literary skaz has significantly influenced the narrative framework of contemporary Russian estrada comedy. Skaz’s “theatricality,” “orality,” ambiguous authorship, spontaneity, and “folksiness” have the potential to add a rich, conversation-like complexity to the generally non-improvisational Russian comedy performance. Skaz’s allocutional projection of the audience into a comedian’s performance also creates an illusion of mutual communication between performer and public. While relying on Bakhtin’s treatment of skazas a double-voiced narrative, I argue that skaz allows the comedian to deliver sharp social commentary through a provincial or uneducated persona. Of particular interest for this study is the practical motivation for Russian comedians to resort to the mask of skaz narrators in the 1990s, an era of seemingly open public discourse. I argue that the continuing appropriation of a written, literary text (skaz) by an oral, popular performance (estrada comedy) suggests the versatility of the literary form, while simultaneously testifying to the on-going health of the written and spoken word in contemporary Russia. |
