Chekh-office

Working with opposites and thinking outside of what the assumed character qualities of Dorn are after our clown rehearsal, I thought of a perfect person to oppose everything that I believe Dorn is, hence this youtube clip of all of Michael Scott's finest "Ladies Man" moments from The Office.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIPklHggHFM

-Skye Scott

The Gift of the Seagull

A lonely seagull flies the winds
Majestic... soaring...gliding wings
A single screech sounds from the sky
Come fly with me... come here and fly

My spirit floats to be a part
I feel the beating of its heart
My soul, one with this bird of sea
Now knows the meaning to fly free

I feel the winds caress my soul
And soar the streams without a goal
My being trembles of delight
A treasure I received tonight

The seagull's flight of soaring high
The gift of what it means to fly

by Munda

Opposite of what people say about Masha :

Act 1:
Med-You’re not healthy, your father is extremely rich.
Med-Your soul and my soul have a common point of contact.
Med- Every day I walk four miles and four miles back and all I meet with when I get here is your concern.
Trep- Mashenka never looks for me. She’s so tolerable.
Dorn- You’re so easy going.

Act 2:
Ark- You’re forty-two and I am almost twice that.
Dorn- Masha looks younger that Arkadina.
Ark- You are always running around, you always look into the future.
Dorn- Masha never drinks.
Sorin- Masha is full of happiness.
Trig- Never takes snuff or vodka… always wears white. The schoolmaster hates her…

Act 4:
Med- Masha is such a great mother, she is always with her son.
Pol- Masha’s a bitch.
Trep- Marya Ilyinichna would never go visit Nina.

Suzuki Seagull

I was looking over some notes I made after a Suzuki class one day when I had a particularly revelational experience The Suzuki work demands a high level of both physical and mental stamina and I decided to utilize an exercise called stomping shakuhachi to explore more of Konstantin.
As the exercise began, I chose a focus and sent my energy mercilessly towards that focus. Stomping shakuhachi requires a sense of controlled abandonment and suddenly I turned and saw Caitlin. I just wanted to throw myself at her feet, to contact her somehow, to contact my mother, just once, for the shortest time, and then I would get back up and resume the exercise. Of course, the precision of the form did not allow me to do this (aside from the fact that Catherine would have murdered me). And it was so frustrating marching to this arbitrary beat, sweating out my ass, and I realized that this should be how hard I am fighting during the whole span of the play, with this kind of desperation where every single molecule in my body is activated. And when we all fell to the floor to prep for the shokhuhachi, I had never been more viscerally connected to the exercise. When I rose from the floor, I instinctually made a gesture, holding a gun in my right hand. I knew that I would never point that gun at anyone else but myself. Fighting against that knowledge became my obstacle. Maybe I could muster enough strength to turn that gun on the people who really deserved it, my mother, Trigorin, Nina for having an affair with Trigorin. It became harder to keep myself from dropping to the floor with exhaustion, from pointing the gun to my own head until I had expended the last ounce of my strength to turn it the other way.
If I could just transport this intensity into myself internally during a scene--all of the dynamic friction between what I want and what is stopping me from getting it, I think my work on stage would be filled with so much more. Well, that’s a challenge for me!
- Alborz G-Money

Paltr-y Chekhov

Here is a link to the New York Times interview with real life mother and daughter superstars Blythe Danner and Gwemyth Paltrow, playing Arkadina and Nina in The Seagull at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00EEDB1231F930A3575BC0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Go Daisy go!

As I go forward in this process and approach these final Acting classes, I am thinking about what Matt was saying last class,and I realize that this is my chance to compose the best work I have ever done. The biggest challenge for me, and also the most fun, will be to completely transform Daisy's mannerisms and behavior(more earthy, grounded, mature) into a young girl, because I dont think I'm anywhere close to that yet. But that is an actor's job, to tell a story and use their tools of expression (physically and vocally) to portray any character they are given. I am really thankful to have this opportunity to fill out a younger character, because I am usually always cast in the same type of roles: Mothers, really old women, or strong leader-types, but I know I can do so much more. My goal is to infuse Nina with Daisy's hopes and dreams (because many are the same as Nina herself), but give her more bouyancy and life and although she is a smart girl, a little bit of naivety t!
o suit her age. I want to make her real, and ground her in the reality she's living in without giving her too much weight. Most importantly, I want to just be honest, and do all these things without adding so much decoration on top of the text. Our director for Into the Woods Kent Gash said, "You only need to add shit when it's a bad script. When the text is good, it's all in there." , and that is certainly the case with The Seagull. It's all in there, now all we have to do is be honest, and honor the great and timeless story we are telling.

...wish me luck :)

--Daisy

Blue Skye Thinking...

This is a list of things that I have been thinking about with Dorn in and out of rehearsal that I find to be very fun, interesting, and important.

"Every moment in a play you must assume is one of the most important moments in that persons life."

"Tony McKay has become my 'icon' so to speak, from Catherine Moore's excercise. Not only because of his thoughtful, smooth, and languid mannerisms but because of his stoicism and lady-killer calm assertiveness."

"Truth is plain, it is simple"

"Status is a terrible thing to act."

"Love and nervousness is all around in The Seagull. Dorn is not nervous, he believes he is the voice of reason."

"Speak thoughts, not lines."

and

"You are enough" - Matt

Just some things I've been bouncing around. Im working more toward stillness with presence, and trying to get rid of my jerky awkward Skye gestures.

say, say, say, what you want to say....

Chekhov?

raise your voice in chorus

I found some great Choral Music Videos I would like to share. Not only are the wonderful to listen to but also they sucked me into the world of Chekhov. Some is more intense then others, but I tried to include a wide variety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mVKdE9ZEVE
-Rachmaninov (1873-1943) with video collage of both old and modern Russian footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTH0pcu_t_8&feature=related
-Ave Maria (Rachmaninov)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM4tD422nTQ&feature=related
-Video of a Funeral Service for a Russian Choral member cut in with amazing footage of Russian Cathedrals both exterior and interior. An amazing video although it is almost 8 minutes long. The singers are the Male Choir of St. Petersburg and although this specific group was not formed till 1993, they have a great tone about them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WpD2Cspn6g&feature=related
Apparently these are the lowest choral voices in the world. The video is short and has great pictures of old Russia that are very helpful. The choral music is very old and sometimes turns into a kind of chant, but the sounds are amazing.

blue hairs vs new Heirs

The day before I went to see the production of the Seagull that is currently running at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York, I stopped by the box office to ask about their student ticket policy. The gentleman in the box office told me that student tickets were $26.50 (tax included) and that they were to be purchased the day of the show (a fairly standard student price and policy). But what I found interesting about this encounter was that the box office man told me “…you should have no problem getting tickets because very few students have come to see the show and we almost always have extra tickets.” When I think students, I think young people. So what I took away from the conversation was that very few young people had come to see the Seagull. This struck me as strange. Why was this star studded, critically acclaimed show that was selling out full price tickets almost every night not attracting people of our generation or younger. Chekhov is a household name comparable in a way to Shakespeare. My curiosity got the best of me, and I did some snooping around online. It turns out that not only was the box office man correct, but it appeared to basically be the same situation some months earlier when the play was being performed in London. The next day I was back in the Times Square area and I went around to some other Broadway theatres. The vast majority of shows had sold out of student rush tickets meaning that young people were certainly still going to the theatre. Now obviously it is a generalization to say that young people are not interested in Chekhov, but it seems that in terms of ticket sales, the Seagull is at the bottom of their priority list. I bring this up because there are many themes in the Seagull (and the rest of Chekhov’s plays) that relate directly to young people and provide valuable insight into issues that are still dealt with today. Yet despite this fact, young people do not seem to view the Seagull (at least this production of it) as relevant enough to see.
As the next generation of actors, we have a responsibility to not only perform Chekhov and other non-contemporary texts well and honestly, but we also must continue to find new ways to attract a younger contemporary audience and point out the relevance in the masterpieces that have gotten theatre to where it is today. I am not entirely sure how to do this, but I believe it is an important dialogue to have. I would be very interested in feedback with regard to whether others think that is an important issue. Much Thanks
-Bonnar

da country

I like these shots (TEACHER SAYS : I only added one as the other has already been submitted by a student for this blog) of the countryside because they show two contrasting seasons yet they both have very similar qualities about them. The vastness of the land and the sweeping landscape are apparent in both and by examining the different seasons it helped humanize the images of the Russian Country that I have in my head.

Push-y poems

A few poems by Pushkin that encompass themes of the play and also exemplify Russian sensibility on art and love:

--“I Loved You…”

I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul
The former love has never gone away,
But let it not recall to you my dole;
I wish not sadden you in any way.

I loved you silently, without hope, fully,
In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;
I loved you so tenderly and truly,
As let you else be loved by any man.

--“To a Poet”

A poet! Do not prize the love of people around,
It soon will pass -- the glorifying hum --
And come a court of fools and laughing of cold crowd --
But you must always stay firm, morose and calm.

You're king: live lonesome. Along the freedom's road,
Stride there, to where just shows your free mind,
While modernizing fruits of thoughts, beloved,
And not demanding you to be awarded.

Awards inside of you. You are your highest court;
Severely then all, you value your effort.
Well, are you satisfied, oh, my severe artist?

You're satisfied. Then let the mob condemn your verse,
Spit at the altar, where your fire burns,
And toss your brass tripod with somewhat childish wildness.
--“The Burned Letter”

Farewell, Letter of Love! farewell: it’s her desire.
How long did I delay! How long refused, in ire,
I to destroy the single joy of mine!...
Enough! The time has come. Burn, scripts of love divine.
I’m ready; nothing else can call for my sad soul…
Now the greedy flame is touching its form whole…
A minute!… it is flamed and blazing – smoke, light,
With my bitter laments, is flying of my sight.
And now the ring’s stamp forfeited its form previous –
It’s boiling – the seal wax… O, Providence of Heavens!
That’s all! The letter’s leaves are twisted, now black;
On their light ashes their well known track
Is whitening… My heart is squeezed. Oh, dear ashes,
In my sad destiny, my poor consolations,
Forever lie on breast, so fully, fully wracked…

images

Arkardina and Trigorin, sitting in a tree....

more flowcharts

Dames....

I found three pictures of female actresses of, two of whom would have been contemporaries of Arkadina. The first is an actress performing in "La Dame Aux Camelias." The second is Eleanora Duse and the third is Sarah Bernhardt. They are both performing and I think their theatrical poses are exemplary of both how Konstantin resents his mother, her indulgence as an actress and her ability to exude passion only on stage and never for Konstantin--and also his attraction to the theatre. Looking at these pictures, I see a bit of Nina in all three of them, the poses are striking and I would have coached Nina to follow the example of these larger than life actresses. So while I outwardly balk at the "modern theatre" and profess the "doctrine of new forms," I admire the same traditional, arguably indulgent technique in Nina as she performs my play.

from your teacher

check this out :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/nov/17/anton-chekhov-dacha-museum-yalta

alone on a horse

http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-18239168.jpg?size=572&uid=%7B2FC5451A-CFBC-4759-9DB6-19E8C104AE78%7D

I was originally looking for images of traditional horseback riding in the late 1800's, and I came upon this image instead. It really struck me, and in it I can see the innocence and sexiness of Nina. She, like Nina is dressed in all white, and I love how pure and fragile she looks. I absolutely loved this picture..

Seagull!

This is so cool! MSM (Manhattan School of Music) recorded an Operatic version of The Seagull. To purchase the album, go to this link:
http://www.dramonline.org/tracks/seagull-act-i-nina-i-am-alone

Here are some excerpts out of the liner notes from the production:

Composer's Notes:

(Written prior to the opera's 1974 Houston premiere:)

It is always difficult to describe why a composer picks a particular subject. It's an almost intangible quality…that cries out for music. I thought that I would be able to translate [The Seagull] into my own operatic terms. I think of the psychological levels of the characters and the way they relate and don't relate to each other. One is the character of Masha, who is not very important in the play; but she struck me as being so interesting psychologically, so deep, that she became a very important character in the opera. Musically, I have found it very interesting to describe the many moods of this girl.

First, Kenward and I sat down and discussed the shape of the opera. The play is in four accts; the opera is in three. We discussed and highlighted the potentially “musical” spots: for instance, I wanted a trio for the three ladies to sing, and he found a situation in the play where that could very easily happen; I wanted certain duets, certain solo pieces, certain ensembles, and he found spots in the play to fashion them. Then he wrote the libretto, and as he would send me a scene, I would set it.

When I had finished the first act, he came down from Vermont where he was writing the libretto to hear it. We then talked about the second act and proceeded from thee. We made some revisions. For example, there were first revisions of the libretto with Kenward himself. In one instance a duet in the second act that I wanted him to do. I described a certain feeling I wanted and he proceeded to write words that were not in the original p0lay. There were some things for Arkadina: I wanted her to sing a very impassioned second act aria to Trigorin. We discussed the kinds of things that she would say. We also gave her a scene from Oedipus, because she is an actress and it would make, we felt, an exciting finale for the opera. Then, when we worked with the director, there were still other changes. There is a scene in the last act between Constantine and Nina in which they meet for the last time. The director [Frank Corsaro] thought it would be better. So I rewrote the scene…

I wanted to write a piece which would speak to the audience with luscious vocal lines and beautiful orchestration. So that's what I did with this piece. I was no longer concerned - am I “modern” or not?

(Written prior to the December 2002 production:)

Over 28 years have passed since the premiere of The Seagull, half a lifetime for me. Of my 17 operas, it remains my favorite child. The musical atmosphere has changed greatly in the interim and the lyric, romantically tonal is no longer the exception, but now the standard. Critics are no longer shocked by a flow of melody from composers, and the love of audiences for a new work is no longer suspect. For this production, I have written two new interludes to accompany the act divisions and stagecraft. As I wrote them, I was flooded with the feelings of my 26-year-old self and so grateful that this opera has survived and is still being produced. It has been twenty years since I have written an opera and I have in all that time refused to do so. But now my heart and mind have changed and as I pored over the score for this New York production, and in preparation for next season's in San Francisco, I begin to hear faintly in the back of my mind…music…operatic music. Perhaps soon t!
here might be number 18.

*

Thomas Pasatieri

Librettist's Notes:

(Written prior to the opera's 1974 premiere)

I re-re-read the play. It seemed a hopeless mystifying project. It sat there on the page, a cryptic presence wanting only to be left alone. Then I went to see my friend Stella Adler, knowing that she knew about Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre and Chekhov. She sat down, a copy of the play in her lap, and began to talk about the play's opening moments - Mash…a storm about to break…the air is unbearable…it's dusk and Masha wears black…his dirty fingernails…no one makes love to her…

I realized the way to proceed was to mine the under-the-surface structure, the labyrinth of details that had at first put me off in Chekhov's plays. Time onstage moves like real-life time - in a muddled way, with stars and stops, with sad high points that are cut off abruptly, turning into absurd low points, which drift on and on, and become funny or suddenly heart-breaking, and sometimes nothing seems to be happening, and the initial boredom of nothing happening, the slowness, becomes riveting. That was the challenge: to try to create this complicated `real life' time sense for the first time in an opera.

- Kenward Elmslie

Filling the silence

This post is some of my thoughts on filling the pauses, especially the one before Skye's line "The Angel of Silence has passed over us."

On Friday all of the actors had a Viewpoints class with Catherine Moore. We did an exercise where we investigated a painting in an art book, and then had an open viewpoints session with music supplied by Catherine. Our assignment focused on trying to look at the picture and translate what we saw into our Viewpoints vocabulary. It was a very informative class. We created a piece of theatre as an ensemble. We did this by LISTENING to each other and trying to play off of each other. If someone had an idea, everyone was open to building on it.

This is the kind of environment we have to bring to this ensemble scene. Even though we all have our own intentions... they have to be found in the other people on stage. The silences only work when what we're discovering something new in the other people on stage. If you want to see people standing around in silence not reacting to each other... go to a museum. The silences are where HUGE discoveries happen. Something Matt said to me in class was something my silence could be filled with is the discovery that Nina is enthralled with Trigorin.

I hope this is something we can all work together on... cause when we all find it together... it feels like acting.
And acting feels good...

Peter

The Notebook of Trigorin by Tennessee Williams

Dolores Whiskeyman

The world of Anton Chekhov is a melancholy place where love is unreturned and ambition thwarted. Here, the light is ever fading against the leafless trees and the maidservant, always in black, forever bemoaning her passionless marriage to an insufferable schoolmaster.

Upon this template, Tennessee Williams has sketched The Notebook of Trigorin. a "free adaptation" of Chekhov's The Seagull, which makes its Washington premiere at The Keegan Theatre in Arlington.

As in the original, The Notebook of Trigorin offers an absurdly convoluted tale of love, lust, vanity, and bad aim with a pistol. Consider: Masha loves Constantine who loves Nina who loves Trigorin, who loves, apparently, just himself, but tolerates the passion of Irina, while flattering himself with the affections of Nina and - in Williams' version, anyway - skinny dipping with Yakov on the sly.

With a storyline like that, you expect a few laughs -- and you get them. But the black humor that inhabits all of Chekhov's plays bleaches to a pale mirth in this version. Refracted through his lens, Chekhov's biting social satire becomes an elegy -- but a lovely one, and under Mark A. Rhea's direction, exquisite.

So leave Chekhov at the door and deal with this play on its own merits. Though the storyline is mostly Chekhov's -- with a few variations -- the sensibility and the language is all Tennessee, lovely and lilting and poignant at points. The strength of the play lies in characterizations so vivid that they live on in the imagination long after the lights have dimmed. Williams renders his characters more sharply than Chekhov. Dorn, the doctor -- a staple character in Chekhov -- is downright nasty -- and Masha the overseer's daughter, is a lush.

If it did nothing else, Rhea's production proves that the power of theatre to transport us lies not in its props and costumes and sets, but in the charged emotional energy between actor and audience. The seduction begins with the first beat of the play -- when Jeremy Beck, as Constantine, literally leaps into the scene, and it continues until the final act, when Constantine slams shut his writing desk and reaches oh so slowly for a drawer the audience knows contains a pistol. He is completely defeated, completely still, his back towards the audience, his face towards the lake, and as his fingers work the drawer open and fold back the velvet lining, the audience is absolutely breathless, watching him. All the while Beck never looks down. His eyes are focused on the lake beyond the window, the place of his great humiliation.

It is at the lake that the play opens-- twilight on the country estate of Constantine's mother, Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina, a prominent but aging actress of the Moscow stage. Constantine is preparing to present his first play, with a neighbor girl in the lead. But poor Nina (Linda Jean Chittick) isn't quite up to the role. Nor is she up to the intensity of Constantine's affections; her eye is drawn instead to the writer Boris Alekseyevich Trigorin (Ian LeValley), Irina's younger lover.

Beck lures us into great sympathy for Constantine, an annoyingly depressive youth who cannot attract the love of the woman he wants nor shake the obsessive attentions of the woman he doesn't. As Constantine cries out for "new forms, new forms!" we realize that his play is really an old form - a child's clumsy ploy for maternal approval. He doesn't get it, of course. For as he observes, in Moscow, Irina is an energetic 32 - at home, in the presence of her 25-year-old son, she is a tired 43 -- and she resents it.

Yet Rena Cherry Brown brings vulnerability to Irina, softening that enormous vanity and making it easier to forgive the offhand manner in which she dismisses her son. Irina's neediness drives her; she is hopelessly in love with Trigorin, an opportunist who -- everyone knows -- is as bored by her as she is inflamed by him. Desperate to be loved, Irina cannot give love, and her insecurities ravage her son, whose hopeless pursuit of Nina reflects the rejection he feels from his mother.

At the center of the psychological war sits Trigorin, a cool observer with a notebook. At once charming and manipulative, petulant and brutal, he is the agent of tragedy and remains untouched by it. As Williams recasts him, he is also a closeted homosexual - but for what purpose? That is never clear, and it is the weakest element in the play. The conceit, once raised, ultimately goes nowhere; the outcome of the play is the same and Trigorin's role in it unchanged. His sexuality becomes an aside - more of a distraction than an enhancement in a story driven by the sexual frustrations of its principals.

But as Trigorin, LeValley is fascinating in his restraint, the intimations of his secret life revealed ever so subtly. In the way that he settles into a chair, in the turn of his head or the flicker of a smile across his face, LeValley shows us Trigorin's true nature long before Williams does. In this fashion, Rhea saves Williams from himself, and prevents his delicate meditation on the frailty of human nature from deteriorating into a politically incorrect cautionary tale about the impact of an overbearing mother on the personality of her weak-willed son.

Turgenev

Since so much of Russian identity is said to be defined by writers I thought that it may be interesting to examine some of the big names. Below is a link to Fathers and Children, said to be Turgenev's most powerful work. I would encourage everyone to at least give time to read the introduction to the book as it will help to inform a bit of how our community and country defines itself.






http://books.google.com/books?id=dFsMAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage#PPP1,M1

mourning has broken...

We were talking about in class what Masha means when she says, “I am in mourning for my life.” I did some research on what it was like when someone died and what the funerals were like.
Funerals in Russia are not only a time for mourning but a period of elaborate food and drink rituals. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the day of death, the day of the funeral, and the 3rd, 9th, and 40th days after death are all considered days of mourning. In addition, several Parents' Days are assigned by the church throughout the year to remember the dead. On all of these days it is customary to visit the graves and leaves some food on the grave as a symbolic offering to the loved ones.
On the day of the funeral the family prepares and serves a special dish: sweet kasha made with wheat or rice. Grain symbolizes eternal life, and sweetness symbolizes heavenly peace. After the funeral, family and close friends gather at home for the funeral banquet. A table setting is prepared for the deceased person and a chair is left empty in memory of the departed. People talk about the life and good deeds of the deceased and drink to his or her memory and for the peace of their soul. A similar banquet is repeated on the 40th day of death.
When in mourning you were expected to wear all black.
It seems that a funeral is a laundry list. The same steps were expected to happen every time a person passed away. They have special days devoted to remembering that person. Masha, however, claims that she is in mourning everyday, and not for a person but for her life. This is very comical. I think it would be interesting for me to try and make Medvedenko laugh at this statement, instead of making it a pity party.

What's in a name?

Maria Mariya Marya Masha Mashenka Mashulya

The girl's name Masha \m(a)-sha\ is a variant of Mary (Latin), and the meaning of Masha is "star of the sea".

Meaning and origin: The name is supposed to be of the Old Jewish origin and has many meanings such as: be against something, deny,be bitter; saint, high and tall, bitter, beloved, obstinate, sad, and persistence, superiority, mistress, lady, stubborn.

Chekhov had a sister named Masha, who supported his writing, and always wept at his plays.

more hair...

facial hair

"There are two kinds of people in this world that go around beardless — boys and women — and I am neither one." (A Greek Saying)

pictures....

For my blog I am giving you two pictures that I found, the first is a famous painting from the 19th century by Russian artist Ilya Repin of Tsar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) after murdering his son. This painting gives me the most vivid imagery of my final moment in the Seagull when I find Konstantin dead. It is a beautiful work of art. The second photo is of Lake Pleshcheyevo. This lake is the place where the Russian Navy was begun. Peter the Great began building the very first Russian ships here during his reign. The image though is a great one to get a sense of the enchanting lake that lies as a backdrop for our play.

Konstantin and single motherhood

Dug up some literature on single mothers and their children. Caitlin, I think this raises some questions about our givens, relationship as well as our subtext much of the time. The article I read is titled “Family Structure and Children’s Success: A Comparison of Widowed and Divorced Single-Mother Families” from the Journal of Marriage and the Family (May 2000). The citation and website link is below. Following that are some notes I took:
Biblarz, Timothy J., and Greg Gottainer. “Family Structure and Children’s Success: A
Comparison of Widowed and Divorced Single-Mother Families.” Journal of
Marriage and the Family 62 (2000): 533-48. JSTOR. May 2000. 9 Nov. 2008 .

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566757?&Search=yes&term=structure&term=family&term=children%27s&term=success&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dfamily%2Bstructure%2Bchildren%2527s%2Bsuccess%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26wc%3Don&item=5&ttl=11265&returnArticleService=showArticle

Notes:
• the experience of children raised by divorced mothers is markedly different from the experience of children raised by widowed mothers.
• children raised by divorced mothers are less likely to complete high school and/or college than those of widowed mothers (533)
• children raised by divorced mothers are more likely to have menial and/or unstable occupations than those of widowed mothers (533)
• adult children raised by divorced mothers experience more depression and unfulfilment than those raised by widowed mothers (533)
• in a typical two parent family, children learn about how to function and interact with authority; the children of single parents are more likely to suffer one of two extremes: either great neglect or excessive parental authority (534)
• children with stepfathers (the mother being either widowed or divorced) tend to fare negatively in terms of education and occupational status relative to biological two-parent families (537)
• divorced single mothers will tend to socialize more often with their relatives than widowed single mothers (543)
• divorced single mothers tend to be more dissatisfied with their financial situation than widowed single mothers (544)
Is Konstantin’s father dead? I do not think so, just gone. Therefore, I think treating Arkadina like something closer to a divorced mother makes the most sense. Konstantin was unable to finish at university for “circumstnaces beyond our control” but could this also have had to do with his situation as the neglected child of a single mother? Is part of the reason that Konstantin so resents Trigorin because he has occupied the position of stepfather in his life? Does Konstantin resent both Arkadina and Trigorin for shutting him away from his real father? Arkadina’s readiness to socialize with Sorin and the others at the country estate also points to a status equivalent to that of a divorced mother. Also, her readiness to “dissolve into tears” when someone asks her for money suggests a financial dissatisfaction characteristic of divorced mothers according this study.
These questions of single motherhood, stepfatherhood, and child development will help me as I deepen my objective of “Let me into this family!”

--Alborz

Quotes

Flies purify the air, and plays -- the morals.

ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to A.P. Chekhov, April 11, 1889

In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Seagull

Try to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don't be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to A.P. Chekhov, April 11, 1889

One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.

ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to Maxim Gorky, September 24, 1900

It's curious that we can't possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem paltry and ridiculous. Did not the discoveries of Copernicus or Columbus, let us say, seem useless and ridiculous at first, while the nonsensical writings of some wiseacre seemed true?

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Three Sisters

When one sees one of the romantic creatures before him he imagines he is looking at some holy being, so wonderful that its one breath could dissolve him in a sea of a thousand charms and delights; but if one looks into the soul -- it's nothing but a common crocodile.

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Boor

Brevity is the sister of talent.

ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to A.P. Chekhov, April 11, 1889

Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.

ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to A.S. Suvorin, Dec. 27, 1889

We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can't have them we had better have nothing.

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Seagull

Write only of what is important and eternal.

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Seagull

I thought famous people were proud, unapproachable, that they despised the crowd, and by their fame and the glory of their name, as it were, revenged themselves on the vulgar herd for putting rank and wealth above everything. But here they cry and fish, play cards, laugh and get cross like everyone else!

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Seagull

There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.

ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to A.P. Chekhov, Oct. 13, 1888

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now, he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined, and the land grows poorer and uglier.

ANTON CHEKHOV, Uncle Vanya (* I THOUGHT THIS QUOTE IN PARTICULAR WAS INTERESTING BECAUSE IT IS SORT OF PARALLELING THE IDEAS NINA SPEAKS OF IN KONSTANTIN'S PLAY)

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!"

ANTON CHEKHOV, letter to Alexander Tikhonov

Time will pass, and we shall go away for ever, and we shall be forgotten, our faces will be forgotten, our voices, and how many there were of us; but our sufferings will pass into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will be established upon earth, and they will remember kindly and bless those who have lived before.

ANTON CHEKHOV, The Three Sisters(* MY FAVORITE QUOTE FROM THREE SISTERS)

You say 'Gorsky', I say 'Gorky'...

I came upon an article written by Maxim Gorsky(1868-1936) about some of his encounters with Anton Chekhov. Gorsky was also a popular short story writer at the time,was the first Russian author to write sympathetically of villains and thieves, and it was Chekhov who introduced his plays to the MAT (Moacow Art Theatre). After his death in 1936, Gorky left behind a body of work that helped to found socialist realism. His other plays include The Zykovs (1914), The Old Man (1919), The Counterfeit Coin (1926), Yegor Bulychov (1931), and Dostegayev and Others (1933). In addition to his plays, novels, and short stories, he also wrote an autobiographical trilogy consisting of My Childhood (1914), In the World (1916), and My Universities (1923).

Here is a link to the article in it's entirety, http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc6w4.html.... but here are the points I thought told a lot regarding Chekhov's personality through the eyes of a dear friend.



think that in Anton Chekhov's presence every one involuntarily felt in himself a desire to be simpler, more truthful, more one's self; and I often saw how people cast off the motley finery of bookish phrases, smart words, and all the other cheap tricks with which a Russian, wishing to figure as a European, adorns himself, like a savage with shells and fish's teeth. Anton Chekhov disliked fish's teeth and cocks' feathers; anything "brilliant" or foreign, assumed by a man to make himself look bigger, disturbed him; I noticed that whenever he saw any one dressed up in this way, he had a desire to free him from all that oppressive, useless tinsel and to find underneath the genuine face and living soul of the person. All his life Chekhov lived on his own soul; he was always himself, inwardly free, and he never troubles about what some people expected and others --coarser people--demanded of Anton Chekhov. He did not like conversations with which our dear Russians so assiduously !
comfort themselves, forgetting that it is ridiculous to argue about velvet costumes in the future when in the present one has not even a decent pair of trousers.

Beautifully simple himself, he loved everything simple, genuine, sincere, and he had a peculiar way of making other people simple. Once, I remember, three luxuriously dressed ladies came to see him; they filled his room with the rustle of silk skirts and the smell of strong scent; they sat down politely opposite their host, pretended that they were very much interested in politics, and began "putting questions":

"Anton Pavlovitch, what do you think? How will the war end?"

Anton Pavlovitch coughed, thought for a while, and then gently, in a serious and kindly voice, replied:

"Probably in peace."

"Well, yes ... certainly! But who will win? The Greeks or the Turks?"

"It seems to me that those will win who are the stronger."

"And who, do you think, are the stronger?" all the ladies asked together.

"Those who are the better fed and the better educated."

"Ah, how clever!" one of them exclaimed.

"And whom do you like the best?" another asked.

Anton Pavlovitch looked at her kindly, and answered with a meek smile:

"I like candied fruits ... don't you?"

"Very much," the lady exclaimed gayly.

"Especially Abrikossov's," the second agreed solidly. And the third, half closing her eyes, added with relish: "It smells so good." And all three began to talk with vivacity, revealing, on the subject of candied fruit, great erudition and subtle knowledge. It was obvious that they were happy at not having to strain their minds and pretend to be seriously interested in Turks and Greeks, to whom up to that moment they had not given a thought. When they left, they merrily promised Anton Pavlovitch: "We will send you some candied fruit."

"You managed that nicely," I observed when they had gone.

Anton Pavlovitch laughed quietly and said: "Every one should speak his own language."


Chekhov and the enemy of Banality:

"No one understood as clearly and finely as Anton Chekhov, the tragedy of life's trivialities, no one before him showed men with such merciless truth the terrible and shameful picture of their life in the dim chaos of bourgeois every-day existence. His enemy was banality; he fought it all his life long; he ridiculed it, drawing it with a pointed and unimpassioned pen, finding the mustiness of banality even where at the first glance everything seemed to be arranged very nicely, comfortably, and even brilliantly--and banality revenged itself upon him by a nasty prank, for it saw that his corpse, the corpse of a poet, was put into a railway truck "For the Conveyance of Oysters."

That dirty green railway truck seems to me precisely the great, triumphant laugh of banality over its tired enemy; and all the "Recollections" in the gutter press are hypocritical sorrow, behind which I feel the cold and smelly breath of banality, secretly rejoicing over the death of its enemy.

and Chekhov's thought on Actors? (this relates well to Arkadina and Nina as well)

"An actor, having taken taken two or three parts tolerably, no longer troubles to learn his parts, puts on a silk hat, and thinks himself a genius. Russia is a land of insatiable and lazy people: they eat enormously of nice things, drink, like to sleep in the day-time, and snore in their sleep. They marry in order to get their house looked after and keep mistresses in order to be thought well of in society. Their psychology is that of a dog: when they are beaten, they whine shrilly and run into their kennels; when petted, they lie on their backs with their paws in the air and wag their tails."

Chekhov's Early Writings

I decided to dig up some stuff on Chekhov’s early short stories. Interestingly enough, I found a story called the Reed Pipe that bears an uncanny resemblance to Konstantin’s play in Act I of The Seagull. Before I get into that, here is some stuff I learned about Chekhov the short story writer:
• many of his early stories are highly absurdist, decidedly comical
• he satirizes the Tsarist bureaucracy in numerous stories
• not really concerned with the underdog but moreso with the absurdity of human behavior
In The Reed Pipe (1887) the bailiff of a farm is wandering through the woods and comes across an old shepherd who talks to him about nature. The language is so similar to the text that Nina performs that I could not help but wonder whether Chekhove was making fun of himself, or using this earlier work as a template for Konstantin’s unsuccessful play. Here are some direct quotes:
• “Cows, sheep, and hobbled horses were wandering among the bushes and snuffing the grass in the wood, crackling branches underfoot,” (163).
• Later, the shepherd says, “ ‘Twenty odd years back, I remember there were geese here, cranes, duck and black grouse—it was teeming with them! The gents would go out hunting and all you’d hear was “Bang-bang! Bang-bang!...Eagles, falcons, the big eagle owls—they’ve all gone…” (164).
• “[The bailiff] stared before him in a reverie. He was trying to think of a single area of nature that had not yet been touched by the all-consuming disaster…the rising sun was trying to break through the clouds and catch a glimpse of the earth,” (166).
• “One could sense the proximity of that cheerless time which nothing can avert, when the fields become dark and the earth is muddy and chill; when the weeping willow seems to be sadder than ever and the tears trickle down her trunk; when only the cranes can flee from the all-pervading disaster and even they, as though afraid of offending morose nature by declaring their happiness, fill the skies with mournful, melancholy song,” (169).
• “[The bailiff] felt full of the bitterness and the disorder manifest in nature,” (169).
Wow! Konstantin’s “People, lions, eagles, and partridges…” seems to be a parody of Chekhov’s own work!
Chekhov, Anton. Chekhov: The Early Stories, 1883-1888. Trans. Patrick Miles and
Harvey Pitcher. New York, NY: MacMillan Co., 1982.

--Alborz

Happy Birthday Nina

happy birthday to daisy! our nina! for your birthday here are some cool things i found in essays about nina:

"Nina, innocent of the ways of the world and saturated with the false romanticism of Trigorin's works, does not see the man but the celebrated artist. She is carried away by his fame and stirred by his presence; an infatuation with him quickly replaces her affection for Constantine. To her Trigorin embodies her dream of a brilliant and interesting life."

"Nina and Alienation/Lonlieness: Another example is Nina, who is alienated from her father and stepmother, background characters who have a disapproving, puritanical suspicion of their artistic neighbors."

"The Seagull reflects Chekhov's aesthetic concern with his art. Several of the characters in the play are to some degree interested in the nature and theory of literary and dramatic arts. Two of them, Boris Trigorin and Konstantine Treplyov, are writers, while two others, Irina Arkadina and Nina Zaryechny, are actresses. Others, like Dorn and Shamreyeff, offer critical judgments on these arts. In fact, Sorin's estate serves as a kind of retreat for artists and intellectuals, and much of the play's dialogue, rich with allusions and topical references, concerns artistic matters. From the vantage point of Nina's puritanical father and stepmother, who remain offstage, those who gather there are self-indulgent and immoral. Nina's parent's view reflects the traditional attitudes still dominant in Russia at the time."

OKAY, and this was the coolest thing i found....this teacher assigned this project to his students after they read "The Seagull" and its called "The Nina Variations" and they had to write monologues and scenes of what could have happened to Nina during those years between the acts. this was one i really liked:

"NINA. You see, I’m mot crying anymore. Trigorin walks ahead of me on the street.
He turns corners as I rush to keep up with him. He is already seated in a room as I
pass through its door. There is a way a man walks when his lover means nothing to
him. When she has faded into something as ineffectual as his shadow. I am not
introduced. I stand on the edge of crowds, laughing stupidly at the jokes which I
can’t quite hear. He takes his coat from the hook, leaving mine undisturbed. I lift my bag and carry it … his footsteps growing softer … distant … ahead of me. The light is
off when I reach him. The door is shut. I drape my scarf over a chair. I take the pin
from my hat. And, as I hang my coat next to his … I am close to him for the first
time. So, you see, I am not crying anymore."

the rest are here: http://www.viennatheatreproject.at/education/teachermaterial/Teacher_Material_-_THE_NINA_VARIATIONS.pdf

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! -caitlin

Those names...

hello all...erika talked a bit about this in her presentation, but i think this is helpful reminder to us...why do we call each other by either one name or their first and second? how is that showing our relationship to that character? Are we calling them a nick-name? Our our conversations formal? Trying to figure out the process behind calling Trigorin: Boris Alexeevich Trigorin, and not shortening it.
-caitlin

Every Russian name consists of three names: a first (given) name, a patronymic name and a surname:
First name

The first name is given by parents shortly afer the child's birth. Accordingly to Russian laws child can change the name after majority. The first name is the main name of Russian people. Most of Russian names have a variety of forms. For example, name Mikhail (the first name of the First President of Russian Federation). The full form Mikhail is used in formal relationships, in official documents (passport, birth certificate, contracts). The short nameMisha is used by friends and family members. Affectionate form Mishenka, Mishunya is used by parents, grandparents. And rude form Mishka is impolite.

Patronymic name

Russian patronymic name is derived from father's name according to rule:
Russian male patronymic name forms by adding ending -evich, -ovich. (Nikolaevich, Mikhailovich). For example, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Tha name of Lev Tolstoy's father was Nikolay, so the Lev Tolstoy's patronymic name is Nikolaevich.
Russian female patronymic name forms by adding ending -ovna, -evna. (Nikolaevna, Mikhailovna). For example, Raisa Maximovna Gorbacheva. Tha name of Raisa Gorbavheva's father was Maxim, so the Raisa's patronymic name is Maximovna.

Russians used First and Patronymic Name in formal relationships, with unfamiliar people, with doctors, teachers, lecturers, older members of family, directors, leaders and other respected people (ex. Vladimir Vladimirovich, Lev Nikolaevich, Fedor Mikhailovich).

Doctor, doctor

In preparation for Dorn I started looking into 19th century medicine and the advances made, as well as the practices of physicians and apothecaries of that time. This is an article I found that relays some interesting information of the topic.

19th-Century Medicine
Many discoveries made in the 19th century led to great advances in diagnosis and treatment of disease and in surgical methods. Medicine's single most important diagnostic tool, the stethoscope, an instrument used to detect sounds in the body such as a heart beat, was invented in 1819 by French physician René-Théophile-Hyacinthe Laënnec. A number of brilliant British clinicians studied and described diseases that today bear their names. British physician Thomas Addison discovered the disorder of the adrenal glands now known as Addison's disease; Richard Bright diagnosed the kidney disorder, Bright's disease; British physician Thomas Hodgkin described a cancer of lymphatic tissue now known as Hodgkin's disease; British surgeon and paleontologist James Parkinson described the chronic nervous system disease called Parkinson disease; and the Irish physician Robert James Graves diagnosed the thyroid disorder exophthalmic goiter, sometimes called Graves' disease.
Medicine, like all other sciences, is subject to influences from other fields of study. This was particularly true during the 19th century, renowned for its great scientific innovations. For instance, the evolutionary theory proposed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) revived interest in the science of comparative anatomy and physiology. And the plant-breeding experiments of the Austrian biologist Gregor Johann Mendel in 1866, although initially overlooked, eventually had a similar effect in stimulating studies in human genetics.
German pathologist Rudolf Virchow pioneered development of pathology, the scientific study of disease. Virchow showed that all diseases result from disorders in cells, the basic units of body tissue. His doctrine that the cell is the seat of disease remains the cornerstone of modern medical science. In France, physiologist Claude Bernard performed important research on the pancreas, liver, and nervous system. His scientific studies, which emphasized that an experiment should be objective and prove or disprove a hypothesis, were the basis for the scientific method used today. Bernard's work on the interaction of the digestive system and the vasomotor system, which controls the size of blood vessels, was developed further by the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, who developed the theory of the conditioned reflex, the basis of human behaviorism.
A milestone in medical history occurred in the 1870s when French chemist Louis Pasteur and German physician Robert Koch separately established the germ theory of disease. Important in the development of this theory was the pioneering work of the American physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes and of the Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, who showed that the high rate of mortality in women after childbirth was attributable to infectious agents transmitted by unwashed hands.
Soon after the germ theory was recognized, the causes of such age-old scourges as anthrax, diphtheria, tuberculosis, leprosy, and plague were isolated. Pasteur developed a way to prevent rabies using a vaccine in 1885. In the last decade of the 19th century, German physician Emil von Behring and German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich developed techniques for immunizing against diphtheria and tetanus.
New understanding of infectious diseases made surgery safer. Until the 1800s, surgeons operated in their street clothes, often without even washing their hands. Operating rooms, like other parts of hospitals, were filthy. About half of all surgery patients who survived the actual surgery typically died of infections that developed after the operation. The era of aseptic surgery, in which physicians used sterilized instruments and techniques to avoid infecting patients, was heralded by British surgeon and biologist Joseph Lister. With his introduction of an effective antiseptic, carbolic acid, Lister was able to successfully reduce mortality from wound infection. Rubber gloves were first worn during surgery in 1890, and gauze masks in 1896. 

Another great advance in surgery came with the discovery of anesthesia. Until the 19th century, doctors used alcohol, opium, and other drugs to relieve pain during surgery. These medications could sometimes dull pain but could never completely mask it-patients often suffered from shock and died during surgery. In the United States, physician Crawford Long discovered the anesthetic effects of ether in 1842, and the dentist William Morton used ether in a tooth extraction in 1846. Ether and other anesthetics reduced surgical mortality and enabled surgeons to perform longer, more complicated operations.
A new tool for diagnosing internal diseases became available in 1895 when German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X rays. The Danish physician Niels Ryberg Finsen developed an ultraviolet-ray lamp, which led to an improved prognosis for some skin diseases. In 1898 in France, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium, which was later used to treat cancer.
In 1898 British physician Ronald Ross proved the role of the mosquito as a carrier of the malarial parasite, a disease that has been widespread and sometimes fatal for most of human history. In 1900 United States Army physician Walter Reed and his colleagues, acting on a suggestion made by the Cuban biologist Carlos Juan Finlay, demonstrated that the mosquito is the carrier of yellow fever. This finding lead to better sanitation and mosquito control, resulting in the virtual elimination of this disease from Cuba and other areas.

"Art in Society: Arkadina vs. Konstantin Part 1"

I have really interested in the opposing views of art between Arkadina and Konstantin. Some things I have found. (my thoughts and more to come later...)
-caitlin

"Through his various characters, Chekhov studies the conflict arising from the resistance of tradition to that change. Clearly, Madame Arkadina, a denizen of the existing theater, embodies the views of the establishment. Standing against her is her own son, Konstantine, who preaches the need for a new art, one of ‘‘new forms,’’ an art of forward-looking ideas, not one that merely entertains with timeworn conventions and hackneyed ideas that no longer have any social relevance. As his play indicates, the new art should have prophetic insights into humankind's destiny. His would be a theater light years away from the theater that, for example, Shamreyeff favors, a theater of brick bats and pratfalls."


"Konstantine's art is dismissed by his unsympathetic mother as the ravings of his ‘‘bad temper,’’ while he sees in hers a mindless art that merely continues to pander to the bumptious fools making up the traditional theater audience. Meanwhile, as members of the artistic community spar on these issues, the philistines try to isolate them, dismissing them, as Nina's father and stepmother do, as immoral bohemians."

"The Role of an Artist in Life and in Love
Chekhov does not simply write about artists and love, he creates the embodiment of art and love on stage. Through his characters' particular personalities, Chekhov portrays the various manners of being an artist and particularly, an artist in love. All four protagonists are artists in love. Arkadina, Trigorin, Treplev, and Nina have divergent relationships with their craft and their lovers. Arkadina and Nina romanticize acting, placing it on a pedestal higher than the everyday affairs of life. Arkadina places herself on this same pedestal using her identity as an actress to excuse her vanity. Nina exalts acting as well, but, contrary to Arkadina, she endows acting with nobility, sacrifice, and privilege. In writing, Treplev compulsively paralyzes himself in the pursuit of perfection, while Trigorin obsessively gathers details from his life and the lives around him for his work without allowing the work to affect his life.
Chekhov does not present an opinion about the artist or the artist's role in life and in love. No one character is all good or all evil, and Chekhov depicts these protagonists so that we sympathize and question their actions and words. He presents several takes on love and the artist, allowing his audience to take what they will from the examples that may or may not mirror their own lives and those of their loved ones. All four characters pursue art to some degree because it boosts their ego to be admired and respected for their work. Treplev in particular longs equally for admiration for his talents and for his self. His ego is wounded by his mother and by Nina. Success in love and in writing are equally important to him though he is successful in neither arena. Trigorin has the satisfaction of success in his writing, though he is never satisfied, and as he says, always starts a new story once the old one is finished. In love, Trigorin pursues Nina because he feels he might substitute the satisfaction and sense of completion that he lacks in his work with a love that would fulfill the void he felt as a youth. In some sense the satisfaction these characters obtain from being artists becomes equivalent with their feeling of being loved."

Arkardina's Greatest Fear

"Time, merely implacable, works to no one's advantage in The Seagull."
"Time, in fact, it may be viewed as the play’s principal antagonist."

I was looking up themes in the play, and I read this interesting article that said "TIME IS THE MAIN ENEMY" in the Seagull. It is "relentless and erosive, never a healing influence...Its effect pervades the lives of all the characters, and, because that is basically true to life, it is a defining element of Chekhov's realism."

Arkadina fears her beauty to be taken away from her by time. Beauty, which she has used to further her career, and in doing so she has sacrificed most of her essential decency to get what she wanted and along the way has forgotten and pushed away her son. Without her beauty (for time isn't slowing down for anyone in this play), and therefore no career, and no more Trigorin (for he will find beauty in someone much younger...Nina), what will she have left?

"If there is an overriding theme in The Seagull, it is that humankind's greatest enemy is time, the relentless enemy of passion and hope. It is a play of hopelessly misplaced love or desire. Many of the characters want love from others who are either indifferent or have emotional commitments elsewhere and are frustrated in their own turn. There are no fortuitous liaisons in the play. Rather, except for the residual and somewhat enigmatic passion that binds Irina Arkadina and Boris Trigorin, the passions of each of the needful characters make them miserable, albeit, at times, comically so."

Look at the way time affects the characters later in the show:

"The most devastating impact of its passage is seen between the third and fourth acts, when two years elapse. Nothing works out for the better, or at least what the various characters believe is the better. Sorin grows older and weaker. Irina Arkadina’s beauty continues to fade. Nina’s acting career goes nowhere. Perhaps worse yet, other things remain the same. If it is not betrayed, love merely languishes in its hopelessness, molding like some buds that rot without ever bearing fruit. Masha marries her schoolmaster, Semyon Medvedenko, and bears him a child but is neither a loving wife nor mother, still suffering from a misguided passion for Konstantine, who, in turn, still pines for Nina. Time, merely implacable, works to no one’s advantage in The Seagull."

The Lake

Chekhov's setting of the play around a lake repeats and emphasizes its purpose with Treplev's setting of his play by the lake in Act One. The lake represents both Treplev and Chekhov's desire to move to a more naturalistic theater not limited by three walls. The lake means several different things to the play's characters. The lake is a place of reflection, respite, and escape. Trigorin goes there by himself to fish. Treplev goes to the lake to mope and reflect, perhaps also, to get attention for his bruised ego. To Nina, the lake magnetically draws her to it. It is a place to roost, to feel secure and at home when there is no home to be found. To Nina the lake also represents curiosity and exploration of childhood. She tells Trigorin that she knows all of the little islands on the lake. Treplev tells Nina that losing her love feels like the lake sunk into the ground. To him, losing her affection feels like losing a recognizable place, a place of peace and renewal. Treplev's metaphor describes a life-source—the lake—drying up and disappearing. This is how Treplev feels about his own life in relation to his loss of Nina.

Chekhov & Film

was looking up more of those movies matt was talking about, wanted to share!
caitlin

"monsoon wedding" (matt called it 'the indian chekhov')

"A stressed father, a bride-to-be with a secret, a smitten event planner, and relatives from around the world create much ado about the preparations for an arranged marriage in India."

trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaP-UrmS6Ww

the actual movie:
part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEJZbI-l-Oc&NR=1
part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS4q-6uytys&feature=related
part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB-wTue1RRg&feature=related
part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DmDrCsm4O0&feature=related ****(great ensemble scene)
part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhwBk2ypnEk&feature=related
part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSK1_ezXLGQ&feature=related
part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C54ALy1qjs&feature=related
part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIsz9vp6_HM&feature=related
part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=245WN4SwIEA&feature=related
part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PX_DlxxI5U&feature=related
part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKiMa-4LjYs&feature=related
part 12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1httFuocabI&feature=related
part 13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMvi2Z2-pUY&feature=related
part 14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxkCkRr8ajw&feature=related


"the barbarian invasions" (les invasions barbares)

these are some clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1KgrzCZDo0

and look at this they talk about it being: "a provocative look at the many ties that bind a group of friends and lovers...the story centers around a group of lifelong friends who are academians and intellectuals and their humor reflects it"
=

What you talkin' 'bout, Masha?

What other characters say about Masha:

Act 1:
Med: “You are healthy, your father, though not rich, is comfortably off.”
Med: “Your soul and my soul have no such common point of contact.”
Med. “Every day I walk four miles here and four miles back and all I meet with when I get here is your indifference.”
Trep. “Mashenka is looking for me all over the park. She’s just intolerable.”
Dorn. “You’re all so highly strung. So highly strung.”

Act 2:
Ark. “You are twenty-two and I am almost twice that.”
Dorn. “You of course.” (Ark. Looks younger than me)
Ark. “Because I work, I feel, I am constantly busy, but you are always sitting in one place, you don’t look in to the future.”
Dorn. “She’ll go and put down two glasses before lunch.”
Sorin. “The poor thing has no personal happiness.”
Trig. “Takes snuff and vodka… Always wears black. The schoolmaster’s in love with her…”

Act 4:
Med. “Poor boy. It’s the third night without his mother.”
Pol. “She’s a dear.”
Trep. “I would have gone to see her and Marya Ilyinichna did go, but she won’t receive anyone.”

the schoolmaster...

This gave me a pretty good idea of what my day to day job might consist of. They look pretty well behaved if you ask me.



This is a shot of Russian peasants who live in the countryside at the turn of the century. This is along the lines of how I see Medvedenkos family in the play although he would look more dressed up than this especially when visiting Masha. Appearance is everything!



This is a country residence (not vacation house) in Russia. Although it does not look tiny, you can clearly see the difference between the grand elegance of the country home the seagull takes place in and a house like this which would be lived in all year around.

Election Day Note

HI

If for any reason you are stuck in a line to vote, and it is getting close to classtime, STAY IN LINE AND VOTE. Dont leave the line to come to class. YOU MUST VOTE!!!!

Please use this responsibility wisely. I will be in class and will work with all who are there.

see you all soon

matt

What I say...

Everything I say about myself:

Act 1:
“I’m in mourning for my life. I am unhappy.”
“I very touched by your love but I can’t return it, that’s all.”
“In your eyes there’s no greater misfortune than poverty, but in mine it’s a thousand times easier to go in rags and live by begging than to…”
“Speak to my father yourself. I shan’t speak to him so please don’t ask me to.”
“I don’t care much for my father. I feel in my heart that there is a closeness between you and me.”
“Help me before I do something foolish. Make a mess of my life, ruin everything.”
“I can’t go on any more.”
“I’m in such torment. No one knows the torment I’m in.”
“I love Konstantin Gavrilovich.”

Act 2:
“And I feel as if I’d been born long, long ago; I carry my life about with me, like the endless train of a dress… And often I have no urge to live.”
“I must pull myself together, get rid of it all.”
“My legs gone to sleep…”

Act 3:
“I’m telling you all this as a writer.”
“I tell you frankly: if he’d wounded himself seriously, I couldn’t have lived a moment longer. But I am brave. I went and decided: I’m going to rip this love from my heart, rip it out by the roots.”
“I’m getting married. To Medvendenko.”
“But when I get married there won’t be any time for love, new cares will wipe out all the past.”
“A few drink openly like me, but most do it in secret.”
“And they all drink vodka or brandy.”
“I’m sorry for him. And I’m sorry for his old mother.” (Medvendenko)
“I’m very grateful to you for being so kind to me.” (Trigorin)
“Only please don’t write ‘To my dear friend’, but just ‘To Marya, parentage forgotten, purpose of existence in this world unknown.’”

Act 4:
“Once we move there I’ll forget everything… I’ll rip it out of my heart by the roots.”
“If only my Semyon gets the transfer, believe me, I’ll forget in a month.”
“Long ago.” (Married)

from Bonnar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w69l3oJnnHQ
-This is footage that I found of Chekhov’s personal home in Yalta. Yalta is the primary area where people from the Soviet Union went on holiday. I realize this is a bit after Chekhov was writing, but perhaps it was a similar place that one would go to rest at the turn of the century. The first half is poorly shot but the second half is the interior of what appears to be a woman’s bedroom. I thought this might be helpful to get a feel for the size/décor of a country room. Look at the size of the bed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM3DTTV1Gcc

This video consists of a number of paintings by Niko Pirosmanashvili, a 19th-early 20th century Georgian artist. I thought his work might be interesting for us because he mainly paints people dining and people serving food which is a frequent scene in many Chekhov play. Pirosmanashvili was not very well known outside of Russia and Georgia, but he captures something unique to the time period in many of these pictures.

russian countryside

seagull?

Below is a link to a piece created by Nacho Duato for the Brazilian National Ballet. Very inspiring for Actors, Dancers, and Musicians alike.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u50G5nITFXg

looooong entry

I went back and looked at some material I had gathered on the play, mainly reviews and articles. At this point I have some rough perceptions of Konstantin that I have gleaned from the text, but now I wanted to share some of what I am finding outside of the text. I think looking at reviews of past performances of Konstantin and critical analyses of his character will help me to build a richer groundwork of interpretations and insights from which I can draw stronger, and more specific choices when I get up on my feet. What follows is a series of quotes:
Brantley, Ben. "Thwarted Souls' Broken Wings." The New York Times 3 Oct. 2008. The
New York Times. 3 Oct. 2008. 23 Oct. 2008 .
• “Chekhov’s characters are, they are all cut from the same nubbly cloth of exasperated loneliness and misfired intentions.
• “ ’The Seagull’ classically includes the angry reflections of Konstantin on the “need for new forms” and the inadequacy of conventional theatre and fiction. Here that sense of inadequacy is translated into every word uttered.”
• “Mr. Crook’s palpably intelligent, fiery-eyed Konstantin doesn’t collapse into fatal sadness; he self-combusts from stymied passion.”
• “Mrs. Mulligan…captures the raw hunger within Nina’s ambition, the ravening vitality as well as the vulnerability…There’s a reason that the mother-fixated Konstantin falls in love with her.”
Brantley, Ben. "Theatre Review; Streep Meets Chekhov, Up in Central Park." The New
York Times 13 Aug. 2001. The New York Times. 13 Aug. 2001. 23 Oct. 2008
.
• “Few playwrights demand greater instinctive harmony within an ensemble than Chekhov does. Granted, his characters are often so hermetically self-involved that they don’t even listen to one another. But it is essential that we believe they all breathe the same befogged air.”
• “…there are Arkadina’s son, Konstantin (Mr. Hoffman), an artistic firebrand whose greatest talent is for self-sabotage, and the provincial girl he loves, Nina…”
• “Mr. Hoffman’s Konstantin is closer to third-generation Actors Studio. This immensely gifted performer…gives off real emotional ferocity and sorrow. But he’s still all feelings in search of a concretely defined character.”
Murray, Matthew. "Broadway Reviews: The Seagull." Talkin' Broadway. 2 Oct. 2008. 23
Oct. 2008 .
• (“Mackezie Crook, every bit the ‘petty bourgeois from Kiev’ Konstantin sees himself): His ongoing quest for ‘new forms’ seems more futile than ever opposite a mother who never convincingly embodies the old way he’s rebelling against.”
• “Such twisting also gives Konstantin and Nina’s interactions an intriguing undercurrent that echoes Freudian ideas about boys wanting to marry their mothers.”
• “The saddest and scariest thing about these people is that when they’re about to walk to their doom, they’re doing it with their eyes wide open. They’ve seen firsthand the boundaries between truth and fiction, even as they blur them themselves, and are forsaking those lessons, probably to their own peril.”
Toussaint, David. "The Seagull." Edge Boston. 7 Oct. 2008. 23 Oct. 2008
.
• “ ‘The Seagull’ relies heavily on two themes, the most prominent being unrequited love…More enticing, and timely, are the concepts of talent and celebrity, as Nina dreams of achieving both, Konstantin fatefully struggles to achieve the former, and Trigorin merely laments possessing both in his indulgent grasp.”
• “[Crook is] ill-suited for the role, and lacks the emotional wallop needed to make the ending kill the audience in similar fashion as these poor birds are shot down.”
• “What this production fails to achieve is a true sense of comedy amid the madness.”
Sommer, Elyse. "A Curtain Up Review: The Seagull." Curtain Up. Oct. 2008. 23 Oct.
2008 .
• “As her son loves her despite her vanity and stingy treatment of him, so [Arkadina] persuades us that she simply can’t help herself.”
• “Mackenzie Crook is the most soulful, touching Konstantin I’ve ever seen.”
Gutman, Les. "A Curtain Up Review: The Seagull." Curtain Up. Aug. 2001. 23 Oct. 2008
.
• “Hoffman’s Konstantin is a revelation. While we are accustomed to seeing a broad arc in this character’s deterioration, here the anxiety that is his undoing is manifest from the outset. There is a grief in Hoffman’s voice that represents one of the production’s most compelling features, made all the more poignant when it is interrupted by the vision of an unfulfilled son grasping onto and reverting to the sorts of childhood senses he still craves so clearly. The scene in which he asks his mother to change the bandage on his self-inflicted wound, her stab at motherliness and the subsequent deterioration of all of the attendant hopefulness is glorious.”
Scott, Virginia. "Life in Art: A Reading of "The Seagull"" Educational Theatre Journal
30 (1978): 357-67.
• “Stanislavsky clearly found the attitude toward art exemplified by Treplev to be admirable and worthy of support…Treplev speaks Stanislavsky’s language. The problem is that he does not necessarily speak Chekhov’s,” (357).
• “Only two options appear to be open to [Treplev, Nina, and Masha]: they must successfully adopt some adult profession or role, or they must accept their perpetual nonentity,” (358).
• “While the two women seek identity, Treplev is perilously close to having achieved nonentity, the culminating insult in the barrage which his mother fires at him in Act III,” (362).
• “Chekhov wrote in his notebook: ‘Treplev has no fixed goals and that’s what destroyed him. Talent destroyed him,’ “ (362).
• “In Act IV we are first surprised and pleased to discover that Treplev has become a published writer and then astonished to find that he is attempting to write in the manner of Trigorin,” (363).
Jones, W. Gareth. "Chekhov's Undercurrent of Time." The Modern Language Review 64
(1969): 111-21.
• “Treplev’s decadent play—and Chekhov must have been aware of the irony—is replete with those images and their associations with which Chekhov had for a decade been setting the mood of such stories as Happiness, Lights, New Dacha, and From a Casebook,” (119).
Lahr, John. "Pinter and Chekhov: The Bond of Naturalism." The Drama Review: TDR 13
(1968): 137-45.
• “The play within the play is the embodiment of the romantic Egotistical Sublime—a stillborn creation if there ever was one. Treplev demands an organic, natural background for something coldly intellectual…The setting is perfect for Teplev’s theme of cosmic death and rebirth. He will create a new Eden, with its animal delights and verdant profusion transposed from the external world into his own mind,” (139).

I think the next step for my research is to delve into Chekhov’s life as a writer, his ups and downs, and his experiences. The quote that compares Konstantin’s play to some of Chekhov’s short stories is especially intriguing. What contradicts this notion is what Chekhov himself said about Konstantin as someone with no goals whose talent destroys him. I think the character of Konstantin may be quite personal for Chekhov and I want to go deeper here.
--Alborz

music

This music is awesome, extremely interesting, thought everyone should hear it.

-Skye

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDmyVI_J4Eg

Coming to a theater near you...

This was kind of a cute trailer for THE SEAGULL which was recently done at a theatre in Boston. I liked the music and the succession of photos, although it seems to tell the story from Konstantin's perspective. There is a great shot of Arkadina looking over her son's shoulder as he glares at the stage. If you are familiar with the play, I think each photo is quite telling. My favorite still photo was the expression on Konstantin's face as he is watching his play being done and the redness of the sky outside. It was nice to see the freshness of the play actually being performed outdoors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Ak-jZBMlk&feature=related

MAELSTROM

I wanted to get the exact definition of the word Maelstrom, as Nina uses it when she returns to the estate and tells Konstantin, "We've been drawn into this maelstrom, both of us."

This is an important line, as it signifies how both struggling artists were aimultaneously dealing with paralleling obstacles in pursuing their careers, and just as worse, handling unrequited love. Their only life's passions were ripped away from them, and this line incapsulates the reason for their discpositions in a beautiful way.

mealstrom: a large, powerful or violent whirpool.

artistic temperament

hello hello! guys, I got the enotes pass online to all this Seagull information and the essays they have on here are so interesting and I can't wait to get to sharing all of them. This one first, I found it very helpful: in it the author examines the play and Chekhov's presentation of the artistic temperament. It talks in depth about Trigorin, Konstantin, Nina and Arkadina.

I particularity loved: "Arkadina's view of herself as attractive and eternally youthful is directly threatened by the presence of her grown son. By willing Treplyev into nothingness (‘‘nonentity’’) she is attempting to stop the flow of time itself—time that ages her and allows this boy to outgrow her to find a younger, more beautiful woman of his own, one who will replace her as a woman and as an artist."

I really liked the idea of this, that Arkadina isn't constantly attempting to get rid of her son, but she is fighting to keep him around. She needs someone to have their attention solely on her, whether he is praising her or complaining about her, she can't loose someone who has all this time to just think about her. She needs to be the one he compares everything too, she can't have someone new and like Nina around to steal this from her so she stops the play. Not to push him away, BUT TO KEEP HIM CLOSE. (??) Something to think on for me.
-caitlin
(oh, when they say Treplyov they mean Konstantin...)

The Seagull | The Artistic Temperament of The Seagull


In Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, M. H. Abrams characterizes a recurrent figure in romantic and modern literature—the suffering artist. He notes that the central character in many literary works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is ''the alienated and anguished artist whose priestly vocation entails the renunciation of this life and of this contemptible world in favor of that other world which is the work of his art.’’ In the nineteenth century, this figure first emerged in the romantic poetry of authors like Samuel Coleridge William Wordsworth Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. At the turn of the century, playwright Anton Chekhov employed this dominant image in The Seagull and so encouraged a new generation of writers to construct realistic portraits of this enigmatic character. Through the play's penetrating study of several people who gather together at a Russian country estate, Chekhov explores the complex relationship between art and personal identity.

The Seagull focuses on intimate moments shared by four artists with varying degrees of devotion to their calling. Arkadina and her lover Trigorin have both enjoyed successful careers—Arkadina as a celebrated actress and Trigorin as a best-selling novelist. Yet neither are true artists. In her analysis of the play, critic Emma Goldman argues that Arkadina ‘‘is the type of artist who lacks all conception of the relation between art and life.''

Arkadina's shallow and self-centered nature emerges in her response to her son's play. Her negative reaction has little to do with the play's artistic merit. Treplyov understands that she will dismiss his play before she views it because she has not been included in the cast. He notes, ‘‘She's angry about my play because Nina's acting in it, and she's not.... She's angry in advance because, even though it's just on this little stage, it will be Nina's success and not hers.’’ While he admits she has talent, he notes that her focus is on herself rather than her art:

"You may praise only Mother, write only about productions that Mother's in, rave only about Mother's performance in Camille or The Fumes of Life. And since she finds no intoxicating adulation in the country—Mother's bored."

Her jealousy prompts her to disrupt the performance of her son's play with questions and jeers, which causes Treplyov to bring the curtain down during the first act. Later, while discussing the theatre with her, Treplyov concludes, ‘‘you won't recognize or tolerate anything but your own superficial notions. You sit on and suppress everything else.’’

Unlike Arkadina, Trigorin admits to his artistic limitations. He tells Nina during a discussion about his work, ''Yes, I enjoy writing, and reading proofs. But as soon as something's published, I hate it. I see it's not what I meant—and I feel angry, I feel bad.'' Trigorin acknowledges that his reading public appreciates the charm and cleverness of his works, but that they also consider them inferior to those of the truly great authors like Tolstoy and Turgenev. In an attempt to create classic works of art, he has focused on what he thinks are important themes, yet these ''hurried'' attempts received attacks ''from all sides,'' until he was forced to admit that he did not understand what he was writing about. As a result, he concludes, ''I think in the end all I can really write about are landscapes. About everything else, I'm false, false to the core,’’ and so has given up his dream of creating true art.

Trigorin continues to write best-sellers but would rather spend his days fishing than hone his craft. Goldman argues that ‘‘exhausted of ideas,’’ Trigorin finds that ‘‘all life and human relations serve him only as material for copy.’’ While talking about his stories with Nina, he admits, ''I've forgotten what it is to be eighteen or nineteen. I can't picture it. That's why young women in my stories and novels are unconvincing.’’ Chekhov suggests that Nina might be able to inspire him to write greater works when, after seeing the dead seagull Treplyov killed for Nina, he determines to write a story about the incident. However, Arkadina plays on his weakness, convincing him that only she truly appreciates him, and so pulls him away from the younger woman. As he leaves with Arkadina, Trigorin admits, ‘‘I've never had a will of my own. . .. I'm flabby and weak. I always submit.’’

When he was a young man, Trigorin insists that he had artistic sensibilities and suffered for his art, that his life then ‘‘was a torture.’’ He explains,

"A beginning writer, especially an unlucky one, feels awkward and unwanted—the world doesn't need him. His nerves are frazzled, he's always on edge. But he can't resist being around people in the arts and literature. They, of course, are not interested in him. They ignore him, while he's too shy to even look at them."

After his works began to enjoy popular but not critical success, Trigorin drifted away from his early devotion to his craft.

As Trigorin gives up his pursuit of artistic excellence, he loses his connection with others. The shallow relationships he forms reflect his inability to actively engage with his world. He seems to stay with Arkadina not because he has strong feelings for her but because their relationship is convenient, especially since it affords him the opportunity to stay at a comfortable country estate. His detachment from experience becomes most noticeable in his callous treatment of Nina. After their brief love affair that resulted in a pregnancy, Trigorin ''tired of her'' and, according to Treplyov, ''went back to his old attachments ... in his spineless way.’’

Trigorin's portrait of a suffering artist reflects not only his experience, but also that of Nina and Treplyov. Unlike Trigorin, though, both of these young artists become consumed with their pursuit of the creative process and so devote their lives to it. In ‘‘The Seagull: The Stage Mother, the Missing Father, and the Origins of Art,’’ Carol Flath comments, ‘‘in aesthetic terms, Treplyov renounces knowledge of the world and consequently self-destructs as a writer and as a man; Nina, on the other hand, embraces knowledge and suffering and becomes a mature artist.’’

When Treplyov renounces the traditions of the theatre, he turns his back on his and his mother's world. Flath notes that Treplyov's ‘‘'decadent,' intangible, and inaccessible play represents a wholly spiritual or idealistic art.’’ He answers Nina's complaints over the difficulties in his play insisting, ''I don't want to show life as it is, or tell people how things should be. I want to show life in dreams.'' He condemns the playwright who ‘‘squeezes out a moral, a smug cozy little moral, fit for home consumption’’ and who only ‘‘repeats the same formula with tiny variations.’’ Afraid that following this same path would ‘‘cheapen his mind,’’ he breaks with tradition as he strives for ''new forms.’’ Yet his avant garde productions gain him little success and often alienate him from his audience and from other artists. While Dorn admits, ''I liked his play. There's something fresh and direct about it,’’ his mother and Nina find it troublesome and "decadent." As a result, Treplyov's sense of isolation increases.

His surroundings reinforce his isolation and despair. He notes to Sorin that life with his mother means a house full of famous actors and writers and complains, "Can you imagine how I feel? The only nobody there is me.'' He claims that because he has neither money nor talent, her friends continually measure his "insignificance."

His mother, whose petty, shallow nature prompts her to play on her son's insecurities, compounds Treplyov's feelings of insignificance. He admits, ‘‘My mother doesn't love me.... I'm twenty-five now. That reminds her she's no longer young.. . . She hates me for that.’’

Commenting on their damaging relationship, Flath argues,

"Arkadina's view of herself as attractive and eternally youthful is directly threatened by the presence of her grown son. By willing Treplyev into nothingness (‘‘nonentity’’) she is attempting to stop the flow of time itself—time that ages her and allows this boy to outgrow her to find a younger, more beautiful woman of his own, one who will replace her as a woman and as an artist."

When Treplyov finally does earn a measure of success after his stories appear in magazines, Dorn tells him one afternoon, ‘‘[your work] made an impression on me. You have talent. You must write more.’’ Dorn commends his abstract subject matter that expresses ''great ideas'' for, he claims,' 'Nothing can be beautiful if it's not serious.’’ Trigorin also praises Treplyov's stories, but later notes to Dorn that the young playwright's work is often criticized, insisting ‘‘he'shad no luck. He can't find a style of his own. There's something vague and strange about his writing—almost like delirium. And never a single live character.’’

When Treplyov learns that neither Trigorin nor his mother has read his work, he again begins to despair until Nina arrives. During the past two years Nina has been struggling to establish herself as an actress. Treplyov notes, however, that during this period, ‘‘her acting was crude’’ and ‘‘lacked subtlety.’’ He claims, ‘‘at moments she showed some talent—she screamed well, and she died well. But that's all. They were only moments.’’ When Nina appears at the house, Treplyov hopes that the two of them can ease each other's suffering. Yet while Nina initially looks back on their time together fondly, she decides to reject Treplyov's declarations of love and to continue to strive for artistic integrity. She tells him that the previous night she went into the garden to see if the stage was still there. When she finds it, she admits, ''I cried for the first time in two years. It was like a weight started to lift from me—I started to feel lighter.'' Yet she also notes the difficult nature of the pursuit of art when she tells him, ‘‘We've been drawn into the maelstrom, both of us.’’

She then recalls her affair with Trigorin who, she claims, ''laughed at my dreams, until finally I stopped believing in them.’’ Nina, however, found the strength to endure Trigorin's waning affections and the loss of her child and becomes strong enough to pursue her artistic dreams. She tells Treplyov that now she is a true actress and that her work ''intoxicates'' her. She admits,

"I know now, Kostya, what matters in our work ... is not fame, glory, or the things I dreamed about, but knowing how to endure—how to bear your cross and have faith. I have faith now, and it's not so painful anymore. When I think about my calling, I'm not afraid of life."

Treplyov, however, cannot find a similar source of strength in his art. He admits to Nina, ‘‘you've found your way. You know where you're going. But I'm still living in dreams and images. I can't make sense of them. I don't know what or who it's all for. I have no faith, no calling.’’ His inability to retain faith in his art, coupled with his unrequited love for Nina, fills him with an overwhelming sense of despair, and he kills himself.

Chekhov's compelling portrait of the suffering artist explores the problematic relationship between life and art. Flath suggests that in the play, Chekhov raises

serious questions as to the ethics of artistic creativity; for art to be truly compelling and powerful, it must drain energy from real life; it must murder its object, be that object others or oneself. An art that does no harm is impossible, for it would be the same as life itself.

Some—like Arkadina and Trigorin—who do not have the strength of character to pursue artistic excellence focus instead on gaining popular success. Others, like Treplyov, are destroyed by their inability to retain their faith in their art. Nina alone survives, damaged by her pursuit of her craft, but unwavering in her devotion to it. In his study of these four artists, Chekhov illustrates the difficulties inherent in the struggle to achieve true art.

Source: Wendy Perkins, in an essay for Drama for Students, Gale Group, 2001. Perkins, an Associate Professor of English at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, has published several articles on twentieth-century authors.