After the publication of Sergei Davydov''s debut novel Springfield, Freedom Letters introduces the work of Davydov the playwright. His plays have repeatedly won prizes in drama competitions and are included in the repertoire of many of the world''s theaters. The collection "Five Plays about Freedom" includes stories that differ in genre and form. These are the monopieces "Kolya Against All" and "The Border" (awarded the prize of the festival of anti-war plays "Echo of Lubimovka" in Berlin). The postcolonial "Republic" tells the story of Russian residents of Tajikistan who fled the civil war in the early 1990s. "Letsplay" and "How to Make a Zombie at Home" are teen action plays where stories of love and growing up shine through the noisy adventure setting. What unites all these plays is the theme of confrontation. Davydov''s characters do indeed find themselves "against everyone," but they don''t just survive - they stand up for themselves and their freedom, as best they can to resist the world destroying them, no matter who it is expressed by: a grandmotherly despot, grotesque special agents or the now universally observed "overwhelming majority." "It is strange to try to say something, / when twenty-five percent of the people / are deprived of seventy-five percent of the words / and put asterisks in the place of the most important. / But word is the last power, / and I won''t give it up."
