The article examines tragicomedy and tragifarce as dramatic genres actualized in modern drama, and characterizes their specifics. The concept of liminality is an effective strategy in literary studies, which made it possible to study the peculiarities of modern Ukrainian drama in the context of the implementation of the genre matrix of the ritual of transition in the genres of tragicomedy and tragifarce. Modern Ukrainian playwrights transform the genre varieties of «domestic comedy», resort to tragicomedy, which is able to demonstrate the inseparable unity of the tragic and the comic as a typical liminal state, and choose the tragic farce, which through comic pathos highlights the problematic points of the social structure, which does not meet the current requirements and destroys the individual . Tragicomedy and tragicfarce genres are studied on the example of the plays of modern Ukrainian playwrights L. Tymoshenko, V. Chensky, Lena Lyagushonkova, and others. The combination of the comic and the tragic is an integral component of the works of all modern playwrights: the «comic» becomes dominant, the basis from which the «tragic» grows, which is transferred to the level of the reader’s consciousness, forming receptive liminality as a state of searches, variability of interpretations, perception of works of complex form. Playwrights embody the characters of the works in an atmosphere of joy, laughter, grotesque comedy, while the tragic pathos is formed by the images of the plays, which create an atmosphere of impending disaster that the characters do not feel. The authors turn traditional images and plots into kitsch, make them a means of critical camp: they deconstruct them in the genre matrix of rituals of transition. The contrast between the comic and the tragic is a feature of the playwrights’ artistic style, which forms the basis of the tragicomic: the authors implement a comic plot that can end in a tragic ending, or turn the tragic into an optimistic one
liminality; rite of passage; tragicomedy; tragic farce; drama; author
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