Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is a completely extraordinary person, a wonderful writer, screenwriter, playwright and a great singer
Lyudmila was born in 1938, in Moscow. Her parents were students, and when the war began, the family evacuated to Kuibyshev (Samara). Lyudmila spent a lot of time with her grandparents, who were close to the world of literature, and the girl learned to read early.
Grandmother told the girl that her distant ancestor was a Decembrist and died in exile. Those who read Petrushevskaya’s works are probably wondering if she inherited from him an independent disposition and her own outlook on life?
The Petrushevsky family had traditional home theater performances in which children participated. Lyudmila did not dream about the theater - she wanted to become an opera singer. However, this did not happen.
After the war, Lyudmila returned to Moscow and became a student at Moscow State University. Lomonosov, faculty of journalism. After the university, she worked in a publishing house, and then became the host of the latest news program on All-Union Radio.
In 1972, Lyudmila became the editor of the Central Television - her duties included the control of serious economic and political broadcasts. Having a direct character, Petrushevskaya wrote honest reviews of all programs. And soon, due to complaints from the editors of these programs, she had to quit. Since then, she has not officially worked anywhere.
Literary work
In her student years, Lyudmila wrote many comic poems, scripts for student parties, but she could not even imagine what would become a writer. However, in 1972 she sent her story “Across the Fields” to the journal “Aurora”, and it was published. She wrote all of her subsequent works “on the table” - they were not published anywhere. She was secretly listed in the list of banned authors.
Petrushevskaya also wrote magnificent piercing scripts for plays, but they were not put on either. And when the director Roman Viktyuk nevertheless staged the play “Music Lessons” according to its script, there was a scandal: the play was banned, the troupe was dispersed. The future of the Soviet Union was predicted in the play - the way we see it now, and the then authorities did not like it.
Performances based on Petrushevskaya’s plays were sometimes staged in small theaters, and they appeared on the big stage in the 80s: in Taganka Yuri Lyubimov staged her play Love. The baton was taken by Sovremennik and other theaters.
Lyudmila Stefanovna continued to write plays, prose, and fairy tales, but this was not published anywhere - so her view of literature did not reflect the then tendencies towards embellishment of life. She had the bare truth, filed with some grotesque.
In the late 80s, her works began to be published, and immediately success: for the collection "Immortal Love" Petrushevskaya received the Pushkin Prize. She writes fairy tales, poems, composes cartoons. Her plays and prose are translated into 20 languages of the world.
