By Director Suzanne Withem
I read
The Seagull and
The Cherry Orchard
in undergrad and I'd skimmed
Uncle Vanya and
Three Sisters,
but I'd never really connected with the stiff language or strange characters in
such foreign situations dealing so poorly with what appeared to be relatively
mundane problems. People told me Chekhov was funny, but just reading the text,
I didn't get it. I felt dumb and irritated, so I just gave up on it and joined
the "I Hate Chekhov" camp.
Then, in 2006, I auditioned for the Brigit St. Brigit Theatre
production of The Seagull and was cast in the role of Nina. My
vanity and being cast in a lead role allowed me to put aside my dislike of the
playwright and I dug in trying to understand. It helped that the Artistic
Director, Cathy Kurz, chose Tom Stoppard's translation of the play. It was much
more accessible than others I'd read, and after having compared different
translations of Molière's Tartuffe, I realized how important a good
translation can be. A translator attempting to do a literal translation ends up
with a product that sounds awkward and stiff - as if Google Translate did half
the work. A literary translation, on the other hand, sticks to the spirit and
intention of the original while allowing freedom of interpretation and
providing space for the actors to play. That's what I found in Tom Stoppard's
translation.
That was one of my first big roles out of college, and I
took it very seriously. I applied all my training and watched and listened to
the more experienced actors in the group. Doug Blackburn, Charlene Willoughby
and Jeremy Earl, just to name a few, were in that production. Each had training
and experience far beyond mine, and I did all I could to keep up with them.
Nina's zest for life in the first two acts and her passion in pursuing her
dreams in the third really resonated with me, and I found it easy to get caught
up in the character, riding the wave past intermission. However, she returns in
the fourth act, having had her soul, career, reputation and heart crushed. I
struggled every night to relate to that state. Portraying someone so
world-weary at such a young age, having lived a relatively sheltered life, was
a real challenge for me. But it was a beautiful experience and production all
the same.
When I first read Aaron Posners "sort of
adaptation" of The Seagull, I immediately fell in love. His
love/hate relationship with Chekhov and his plays was immediately apparent and
right in line with where I was, more than a decade after my first encounter
with The Seagull. Posner doesn't just riff on the story; he plays with
the original text. He quotes Chekhov, mocks him, undermines him and points at
him with a flashing neon sign and composes love songs to him. Only someone with
a deep love for the story and the history of American attempts to produce the
play could get inside the work in this way.
Not only does he modernize the texts and situations, he
modernizes the perspectives. Chekhov, through his character of
Konstantin demands "new forms" of theatre from 1898, when declamation
and oratory were considered high art. Chekhov and Stanislavsky, at the Moscow
Art Theatre were attempting to break with tradition by doing innovative things
like having the actors speak directly and naturally to one another or doing
mundane things like eating, sitting, and blowing their noses on stage. This was
revolutionary at the time. In 2017, Aaron Posner screams through his character
of Conrad that we again need "new forms" of theatre, then has us
break the fourth wall in new and surprising ways, invites us to try out new
ways of expressing emotion through music, movement, poetry and
improvisation.
Yet, while both Chekhov and Posner challenge their audiences
to consider new types of art that encourage new ways of looking at the world,
they still provide for fun, humor and the opportunity to experience empathy.
These ridiculous characters who move and talk in ways that surprise the
audience are still surprisingly relatable and lovable, despite their
flaws.
