A century of misunderstandings
After Shakespeare, it is Anton Chekhov who is perhaps the most revered playwright, whose genius will always elude us. As a man who created a paradigmatic form for writing fiction, he is quite the reticent. He may not be the man of our times, but he definitely is the man for our times. Find out more in the exclusive interview…
By Juan Gerald
Juan: Last month, we interviewed Oscar-nominee Diane Lane, who plays the role of Lyubov Ranevaskya in the Broadway adaptation of your play, the Cherry Orchard. Isn’t it quite the irony though? You did do a satire on celebrities. Anton: This time it has come back to bite me. But jokes aside, it is an honour that she has decided to play the role of Lyubov. I understand that
Anton: When I had gazed at the twentieth century Russia, I saw the storm of socio-economic change that took place in my transitioning country. I created a family on the edge of ruin, representing a nation on the brisk of revolution.
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
At first glance, the Cherry Orchard seems to explore the doomed aristocracy, clinging with stubborn blindness to its obsolete status, and the former servant class, grappling with its new-found prospects for wealth and elevation. But the play is more than a myopia of an aristocratic family. It is a struggle for freedom, existence, power and dignity. It represents the real world where beauty is overpowered by activity. It showcases the pangs of pain faced by humanity at the heart of
Anton: When a play is translated from a literature to a theatrical form, a few aspects undergo change. And these changes have created two dichotomic interpretations of my play. One being the Stanislavsky tradition, wherein he defined the genre of my play as a tragedy. And the other was the one I aimed at, which stressed on comic fabric, with threads of vaudeville humour and farce. An emphasis on everyday activities because, “Any idiot can face a crisis- its day-to-day life that wears you out.” Juan: Your work has often posed a challenge for any director to master because it has been a demanding task to convey the subtle details in your plays into a visual form of a Broadway production or a movie. Why do you think that is?
Anton: The basis for the understanding of not only the Cherry Orchard but also all my other plays are the characters and the mood. My characters are often labelled complex due to their inner struggles and conflicts that are concealed within them. But they are not to be judged by merely their words or actions, rather they need to be understood through a combination of untold stories in the plot, hidden symbols in the stage directions and meticulous details of their
...ition to costume, language and dialogue is what fixes the atmosphere and the action. In a manner very similar to Shakespeare, Calderón weaves description of the scene and of what is occurring into the main thrust of the play. In this sense, he is more than a poet, he is a dramatic craftsman who predominantly through his verse alone, creates a drama in its own right. All the clues to the plot and its themes lie in the text; the use of staging, costume, music and props can be used to enhance what lies in the script. What they give to the play is a fuller and more entertaining dramatic production. Thus, if used sensitively and intelligently by a director, these factors can increase the dramatic power of the work. The primary focus, however, remains the language, which relies on a high standard of acting in order to do justice to the subtleties of the play.
Sometimes, cuts in a play obey to reasons regarding the stage capacity, or your budget. In the essay, we will choose our cuts based on the play only, as we consider it an interesting exercise that will surely help us understanding the play. We decided to read the play a couple of times, highlighting the elements we could cut, and after thinking carefully, these are the parts we would cut. We intended to keep it short, as not to alter the meaning of the play, or hinder any part of the plot, we focused on trimming parts that would not necessarily add up to the plot, but instead, are there to show the human parts of the play, these parts are important in their own right, of course, but in our cut, we focused on the plot, excuse us beforehand if we are too severe, and cut some parts we should have
As the cliche goes, appearances are not always what they seem: there are discrepancies between the expectation and the reality in both the physical and intangible traits of an individual. Edmond Rostand equips these inconsistencies in words, behaviors, and events, also known as irony, in the construction of his chivalric romance play Cyrano De Bergerac. His use of situational and dramatic irony establishes the theme of the outward manifestation failing to reflect the true inner identity.
Chekhov himself, a renowned actor, used the technique in blockbusters such as Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Spellbound’. The ‘psyco-physical’ approach innovated by Chekhov has been used by many actors such as the Marilyn Monroe, Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, and Jack Nicholson (Backstage.com). Actors such as Jack Nicholson, while accepting his Golden Globe Award in 1999 and Anthony Hopkins, during an interview have both admired Chekhov’s psychological Gesture. Currently, the Chekhov technique has started gaining popularity as many actors seem to be interested in approaching Chekhov’s psycho-physical
During Russia’s transition to communism in the early 20th century, conflict and unease permeated every part of life. Nothing was stable and very little of what the Bolsheviks had fought for had come to fruition by the time the USSR disbanded in 1991. The “classless society”, which was to work together for the prosperity of everyone, never became a reality. In the end, the majority of Russia’s 20th century was an utter failure on a grand scale. However, there were many amazing products of the system do to the great importance of education in Russian culture. Priceless novels were written, timeless movies were made, and great scientific endeavors were realized despite the rigid control placed upon Russian persons by the government. In fact, some of the most memorable written works of the time were written protests to the creativity-stifling situation many writers found themselves in. Because of the danger to their lives should the wrong people be upset by their writings, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Mikhail Bulgakov wrote their most popular, Soviet-life condemning novels under the guise of satire. Even though they’re satirizing the same subject, in both We and The Master and Margarita respectively, they take very different paths to do so.
The first main area of art and reality colliding in the play is the existence of characters who are referred to as Characters. Pirandello stretches the bounds of meta-theater by having actors portray Characters who swear they are not actors, when faced with other actors playing actual actors and a Director. The layers of unraveling of reality are astounding. The Characters must try and convince not only the Actors and the Producer of their true nature, but also the audience. Pirandello must convey his beliefs about the essence of art through the mouths of Characters seemingly unattached to the actuality of the theater around them. In the play, the Producer acts on stage in place of the author, questioning the sincerity and the true nature of the Characters, who become his r...
“Marigolds” is about change. Collier chose a “fourteen-going-on-fifteen” (1) year old girl because the transition from childhood to adulthood adds layers of conflict to the story. The initially obvious conflict is that of the woman and child inside Elizabeth. She represents the child when she pulls up the marigolds: “The fresh smell of early morning and dew-soaked marigolds spurred me on as I went tearing and mangling and sobbing” (5). She (as the child) is struggling inwardly against being a woman. At the end of her rampage, she is “more woman than child” (1), and the child in her loses the battle. As a woman, she wins “a kind of reality which is hidden to childhood” (5). The second conflict is also symbolic. Elizabeth represents fear. She has the feeling that “ something old and familiar [is] ending and something unknown and therefore terrifying [is] beginning” (1). The marigolds represent hope. The reason for her “great impulse towards destruction” (4) was a combination of fear for the future and bitterness towards the past. In this conflict, fear wins because Miss Lottie “never [plants] marigolds again” (5). The third conflict is the most important. It takes place inside of Elizabeth and is also between fear and hope. At the end of the story, fear may win symbolically, but hope wins inside of Elizabeth: “In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion” (5).
In this essay I shall be writing about why I agree that with the play,
Not all plays are character-driven, in fact a great many are not. So if the characters are not what keep the audience intrigued, well then what does? There are many possible answers to this question. Paper Wheat uses the history of a group of people, a specific message commenting on a time period, spectacle elements such as song and dance, and the genre of comedy to keep its audience both engaged and entertained.
In addition, Chekhov also utilizes allegory, imagery and symbolism. The Geisha, for example, serves as an a...
Under the pear tree on that spring afternoon, Janie sees sensuality wherever she looks. "The first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously" (10). Gazing across the garden...
...stival) starring one of America's most acclaimed actors, Sidney Poitier. Despite the necessity of the brilliant and groundbreaking writing of Hansberry, credit must be given to the filmmakers for translating the stirring emotion of the play into something visually moving. A theater production lacks the creative license for close-up shots of actors' faces, and the composition of the stage comes off as contrived and stilted at times. Although carefully planned and choreographed, the frame composition of the film is a subtle and creative exploration of the emotional message of this play.
The Significance of Act 1 Scene 1 in A Taste of Honey in Establishing the Relationship Between the Main Characters and the Social Context of the Play
When Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull premiered at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on October 17, 1896, critics condemned it as disastrous. However, a production mounted by the Moscow Art Theatre two years later, led to the acclaimed revival of The Seagull as well as the establishment of Chekhov as an accomplished playwright (Bristow, 1977). It is the goal of this essay to discuss the different techniques that Chekhov used in The Seagull, in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the play; specifically focussing on the structure of the play and lastly, the representation of characters and their actions.
Being a director in a production such as Romeo and Juliet is no easy task, and I enter into this paper with that in mind. My goals are to be creative, and do things differently from the many versions of the play we have viewed in class. Each of those directors took the original text, written by William Shakespeare, and turned it into a unique version of their own; unique in the sense that they changed the tragedy by taking out lines, conversation or even entire scenes to better suit that particular director’s needs.