The Dragon
The Dragon (1944) by Yevgeny Schwartz. Evgeny Lvovich Shvarts (1896-1958) was a Soviet writer and playwright whose cult works include twenty-five plays and screenplays for three films (in collaboration with Nikolai Erdman). In 1944, Shvarts completed the satirical play The Dragon, which was seen as subversive in the political climate of post-war Russia. The play tells the story of the knight Lancelot, who sets out to slay the dragon. However, in his quest, he stumbles on a community governed by a bureaucratic hierarchy using the dragon to cover their own use of power. A filmed version, To Kill a Dragon, was produced in 1988.
Translated into English by Max Hayward and Harold Shukman and published in Three Soviet plays, Penguin, 1966. Presented by University Theatre Stellenbosch in the H.B. Thom Theatre in May 1986, directed by Noël Roos.
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Shvarts
UTS theatre pamphlet
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