A Failed Performance: Short Plays & Scenes by Daniil Kharms

Drama. Poetry. Translated from the Russian by C Dylan Bassett and Emma Winsor Wood. People disappear without explanation. The government takes hostages. War and death occur without reason or meaning. The cycle of poverty and deprivation proliferates. A FAILED PERFORMANCE is a collection of bizarre and darkly humorous plays and scenes from the Russian avant-garde writer Daniil Kharms. This collection–the first volume in English dedicated entirely to Kharms’s dramatic works–includes his major stage plays Elizaveta Bam and Lapa as well as lesser-known sketches and hybrid poem-plays, most of which were never published or performed during his lifetime.