There are a large number of fictional works and plays using the title Bliss.

This entry discusses only those works that (may) have been performed in South Africa

Bliss by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940)[1]

The original text

The play has been described as a “satirical-romantic romp through history”, one that mocks the past, present, and a supposedly “ideal” future.[2] Bulgakov creates in Bliss an everyman’s story of the desire to escape the false promises of the Revolution and the inherent dangers in even thinking such thoughts.

Written in Russian between 1929-1933, usually dated as 1934, it was not published in the Soviet Union until 1966,

Adaptations and translations

Translated into English long after his death, usually as Bliss, inter alia by Bulgakov scholar Carl R. Proffer (published in The Early Plays of Mikhail Bulgakov, edited by Carl R Proffer and Ellendea Proffer, 1972) and by Mirra Ginsburg (published in the volume Flight & Bliss in 1985). The text has often been performed in English since.

The play, with its plotline of Ivan of the Terrible appearing in contemporary Moscow, became the basis for another Bulgakov play, Ivan Vasilievich (1936), which later became the very successful and popular Soviet film Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession (1979).[3]