ANTON CHEKHOV

No, not this guy.



I'm talking about THIS guy.



We're jumping into early realism for the spring semester in my acting class, and I've been assigned several Chekhov plays to read over the break. I'm happy to report that it's great stuff in spite of Chekhov's reputation for depressing monotony. To be honest, there are moments of deep angst permeating his work, but there are also numerous moments of intense humor: as my buddy Lex has observed, Americans, when producing Chekhov's plays, tend to emphasize the darkness and miss the humor, thus his reputation for depressing theater--one of the most excruciating moments of my life was enduring a plodding production of The Three Sisters when I was an undergrad at UT; god it sucked! But what could be funnier than existentialism? Sometimes the plays of Chekhov sound more like a Smiths song.

From the opening scene of The Sea Gull:

MEDVIEDENKO. Why do you always wear mourning?

MASHA. I dress in black to match my life. I am unhappy.

Those first two lines set the tone for the entire play, which, of course, ends with the suicide of a young artist who is--get this--frustrated with the state of Russian art and unable to have the woman he loves. Sad, yes, but also really funny. It is this formula, laughter and tears provoked by the same events, that makes Chekhov so fantastic.

Actually, this misunderstanding of the nature of Chekhov's plays goes back to the very beginning. From Chekhov's bio:

In fact, it was not until the Moscow Art Theater production of The Seagull (1897) that Chekhov enjoyed his first overwhelming success. The same play had been performed two years earlier at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and had been so badly received that Chekhov had actually left the auditorium during the second act and vowed never to write for the theatre again. But in the hands of the Moscow Art Theatre, the play was transformed into a critical success, and Chekhov soon realized that the earlier production had failed because the actors had not understood their roles.

In 1899, Chekhov gave the Moscow Art Theatre a revised version of The Wood Demon, now titled Uncle Vanya (1899). Along with The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904), this play would go on to become one of the masterpieces of the modern theatre. However, although the Moscow Art Theatre productions brought Chekhov great fame, he was never quite happy with the style that director Constantin Stanislavsky imposed on the plays. While Chekhov insisted that his plays were comedies, Stanislavsky's productions tended to emphasize their tragic elements. Still, in spite of their stylistic disagreements, it was not an unhappy marriage, and these productions brought widespread acclaim to both Chekhov's work and the Moscow Art Theatre itself.

Even the great Stanislavsky, who created what we now know as realistic acting in order to do justice to these plays, missed the duality of Chekhov's work. I wonder if the world was simply not ready to laugh and cry at the same time; perhaps the plays of Chekhov are better suited to the absurd world we live in today.

Again from Chekhov's bio:

Chekhov considered his mature plays to be a kind of comic satire, pointing out the unhappy nature of existence in turn-of-the-century Russia. Perhaps Chekhov's style was described best by the poet himself when he wrote:

"All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: 'Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!'"

Click here for the rest of the bio.

In addition to the tragi-comic elements, the thing that really gets me about Chekhov's plays is how his characters, filled with regrets for having never realized their potential, are caught up in cycles of behavior of which they do not seem aware or cannot seem to break--they make the same mistakes over and over, trapped by their own unwillingness see things differently. They hate their lives but absolutely refuse to do what it takes to change their circumstances for the better. In The Three Sisters, three sisters, stuck in a country backwater, long to return to the cultured and educated surroundings of Moscow but they never go. In The Cherry Orchard, a wealthy family facing forclosure could maintain their comfortable work-free lifestyle by converting their prized cherry orchard to vacation homes for renting out to Russia's new bourgeoisie, but refuse to do so, and end up in poverty. Uncle Vanya's characters face similar dilemmas. At this point in my life, after having seen friends and myself end up in circumstances not unlike those of Chekhov's characters, I can say without irony that these plays are truly like real life.

That's what makes Chekhov so great.

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