STAGE

The problems of freedom are putting a brake on dramatic writing in the Soviet Union, according to a panel of Soviet playwrights and directors who took part in a “USSR Now” conference at the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland on Tuesday. Henrik Borovik, secretary of the Writers Union, said: “We can say everything now, there are no forbidden topics. But the initial feeling is that it is more difficult for a playwright to work.” Pre- glasnost , Borovik said, to be popular, playwrights only had to be truthful in the midst of an untruthful government; but now that some form of the truth is being published daily in Pravda, playwrights must also be artists. (Borovik implied that that they are not at present.)