Chekhov Diaries: Research

First and foremost, my research consists of reading and listening to the play as many times as possible. There are computerised readings of Chekhov’s work online and one may listen to the automaton’s cold, mechanical reading of Three Sisters. This helps because my mind is not influenced by a particular interpretation such as the wonderful LA TheatreWorks version of the play, which lead me to want to direct the Christopher Hampton version of the play. A wonderfully zippy 2-hour version.

In terms of secondary research, I am reading from Stella Adler’s lectures on Chekhov, illuminatingly intelligent and bafflingly contradictory. If I question her particular approach to acting, (I know how very dare I?) her viewpoint on the world of the play is fascinating. Despite being punctuated by strange anti-English sentiment, it gives us the American view of Chekhov from the scion of great acting dynasty.

The book I am currently reading is Michael Pennington’s excellent Chekhov’s Three Sisters, it’s a study guide an very insightful.

But it brought me to question the value of these external opinions. How much value should I place on listening to Adler and Pennington’s views?

Adler speaks as if she knows Chekhov personally from the inside. Pennington is more of a detective. For instance, he works out that the ‘large provincial town’ the Prozorov’s inhabit (do they? I rather think they don’t live anywhere, they have never left Moscow in their hearts) is probably Perm. Chekhov told Gorky that he was setting the play in Perm.

But here’s my question: what is the value of digging into Chekhov for a connection to the play? Many will wax lyrical on the benefits but I believe looking to the writer to answer questions in the play is like asking the horse why it didn’t win the race.

The fact that it’s Perm isn’t useful to staging my production. It helps me understand the type of town, we are talking very large, but can that useful info ever make itself useful in the staging of the play? I doubt it. Trivial Pursuits.

Now Chekhov was in the Crimean, he was far from Moscow, longing to be back among the cultured, longing to be with his wife Olga Knipper.

Now is this fact useful? It certainly helps me understand why in this play he is fixated on returning to Moscow and his longing to be away from the Provincial Life.

But if an actor in my company has never experienced longing, will knowing this help them play a moment in any scene? No, of course not.

I am not carelessly writing these facts off. My job as the director is (with great respect to Chekhov) to negotiate the complexities of his tran-script and to direct the action of the play. For those that don’t understand this, I am talking of the dramatic action of the play, and the psychophysical action of the players.

Do I need to explain the dramatic action? Maybe I do. The conflict of desire between characters that the playwright uses to move the story along.

So why am I reading research books? Old habits die hard, the misguided belief that I am not doing my job if I don’t and the longing to find that magic kernel that will help the play to reveal its secrets to me.

COACH