A Failed Performance

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53rd State Press
Daniil Kharms, translated by Basset C Dylan, Emma Winsor Wood
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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.

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Contributor Bio

C Dylan Bassett's books are Gad's Book (2023), A Failed Performance: Short Plays & Scenes by Daniil Kharms (2018), and Invention of Monsters: Plays for the Theatre (2015). He is an Assistant Professor of English at Xavier University in Cincinnati. 

Emma Winsor Wood is a poet and essayist from New York City, Emma is the author of the poetry collection The Real World (BlazeVOX Books, 2022) and translator of A Failed Performance: Short Plays & Scenes by Daniil Kharms (Plays Inverse, 2018). She has a BA in Russian History & Literature from Harvard, an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently a PhD candidate in Literature at the University of California Santa Cruz.

She is the editor-in-chief of Stone Soup Magazine—the magazine 100% created by kids for kids (we like to think of ourselves as the Paris Review for the under-thirteen set!).

Finally, she is the co-author of TheComplete College Essay Handbook, and works one-on-one with a select group of students on their college application essays each year.

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