Epik in modern drama (based on the play by Fritz Kater «Time to love time to die»)

On the material of the first part of “Youth / Choir” of the play “zeit zu lieben zeit zu sterben” (2001) by a modern German playwright and director Fr. Kater in the article discusses the issues of the formation in the newest dramaturgy of a transitional genre form, combining the features of a monological play, epical (A. Chirkov's term) and epic drama. Traditionally, these concepts, although close to each other, are differentiated by the degree of correlation with a particular kind of literature. The purpose of this study is to show how the epic and the dramatic relate and interact in the play in question at the level of the plot organization, motivational structure, and intertextual connections. Based on a motif, plot and intertextual analysis, the dramatic logic is built from the initial event to the main one, the extra-historical, timeless meaning of the play is emphasized: the meaning of the repeatability of the story and the fate of young heroes choosing their life path. Fragmented, filled with figures of silence and acquiring special significance in the intertextual context the narrative is organized, however, around the three main events that determine the transformation of the hero on the way to a new life. The genre features that became the subject of special consideration in this article: the integrity of the hero, the principles of the organization of the plot, the motivational structure, the ratio of reflexivity and effectiveness in a monological narrative. Among the selected motives, a special place is occupied by the motives of defeat / outsider (loss, disappointment, life collapse), the search for the maternal basis (absolute and unconditional love), blood and disease. Kater creates a “dis'thing” play, in which the material world is practically not represented, and therefore every object mentioned by the hero: cars, olives, a milk bag, a knife acquires a symbolic meaning and is mounted in the plot-motif narrative.