Dear Anton Pavlovich
We had a great class meeting/rehearsal today. As you know, I was "stuck." So I tried an exercise that I read Peter Brook uses. We took the monologues the actors have been working on, and distilled them through a number of processes down to single phonemes and gestures. What they wanted became crystallized and pure, and when they performed them all together, that section of the room became a veritable PIT of longing. It threatened to pull the whole room into it.
That's what I have to do. I have to distill the play- how the characters relate to time in its purest, most immediate form. Script distillation over the weekend. Thank you for giving me such a rich text to work on. I think you might like where I think I'm headed!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
10/15/09 again
Dearest Sir:
Here's a little more information I've found. I went through the text to see how often characters discuss the past and the future.
Here's what I found:
Mentions of the PAST
Act I:
OLGA: Father died just a year ago today, on the fifth of
May-your saint's day, Irina. It was very cold then and
snowing. I thought I could never live through it; you
were lying in a dead faint. But now a year has passed
and we can talk of it freely; you've a white dress on,
your face is beaming. (The clock strikes twelve) And
the clock was striking then too. (A pause) I remember
as they carried Father along, the band was playing,
and at the cemetery they fired a volley. He was a brigadier
general; but at that there were very few people
walking behind his coffin. It was raining, though, then.
Heavy rain and snow.
Olga: Father was
given his brigade and left Moscow with us eleven years'
ago, and I remember distinctly that early in May, at
this very time, in Moscow everything is in bloom, it's
warm, everything is bathed in sunshine. That's eleven,
years ago, but I remember it all as if we'd left there
yesterday.
Olga: Father trained us to get up at seven.
Tusenbach: I have never worked in my life. I was born
in Petersburg, cold, idle Petersburg, in a family that
never knew any sort of work or worry. I remember
when I came home from military school the footman
pulled off my boots while I fidgeted and my mother
looked adoringly at me, and was surprised when the
others didn't look at me the same way. I was shielded
from work. Though I doubt if they succeeded in shielding
me, I doubt it!
Chebutykin: And I re"'ly never did any· '
thing. Since I left the University, I haven't lifted a '
finger, I've not read a single book even, but just read '
the newspapers ....
Tchebutykin: (To
lUNA) My dear, my little child, I have known you since
the day you were born. . . . I carried you in my
arms .... I loved your dear mother ....
Vershinin: I remember-three girls. Your faces
I don't remember now, but your father, Colonel Prozoroff,
had three little girls, I remember that perfectly, I
saw them with my own eyes. How time does pass! Oh,
oh, how time does pass!
Vershinin: Your father was a battery
commander there, and I was an officer in the same brigade.
Vershinin: I was at school in Moscow and began my
service in Moscow, served there a long time, was finally
assigned a battery here-moved here, as you see. I don't
remember you, as a matter of fact, but only that you
were three sisters. Your father is fresh in my memory; I
can close my eyes now and see him as plain as life. I
. used to pay you calls in Moscow ....
Masha: Now I remember! Do you remember,
Olya, at our house they used to say, "The lovesick"
major." You were a lieutenant then and in love with
someone, and they all teased you for some reason as
the lovesick major.
Masha: But you had only a mustache then ....
Vershinin: But you had only a mustache then ....
Olga: And we lived there, too ....
Vershinin: At one time I lived in Nemetzky Street. I
used to walk from Nemetzky Street to the Red Barracks.
There's a sullen.looking bridge on the way, and
under the bridge you hear the water roaring. A lonely
man feels sick at heart there.
Vershinin: I knew your mother.
Tchebutykin: She was a lovely woman . . . bless her
soul!
Irina: Father was a military man,
but his son chose for himself a learned career.
Masha: Alexander Ignatievich used
to be called the lovesick major and he didn't get a bit
angry.
Andrei: Our father-bless his souI!-loaded us
down with education. It's ridiculous and stupid, but
all the same I must admit that in a year after his
death, I began to fill out and get fat like this, as if my
body were freed from the load.
Vershinin: And all my life I have hung around little
apartments with two chairs, a sofa and a stove that always
smokes. In my life I have lacked just such flowers
..•
Kulygin: A
history of our high school covering fifty years, written
by me.
Irina: But you've already given me a book like that at
Easter.
Kulygin: The Romans were healthy because
they knew how to work, knew how to rest,
they had mens sana in corpore sano. Their life flowed'
on according to fixed forms.
Irina: With us three sisters, life hasn't yet been
beautiful, it has stifled us as weeds do grass
ACT II
Ferapont: And in Moscow, so a contractor was saying
the other day at the District Board, some merchants
were eating bliny; one of them, it seems, ate forty
blinies and died. It was either forty or fifty. I
wouldn't remember.
They married me off when I was eighteen years old,
and I was afraid of my husband because he was a
teacher, and that was when I had barely finished my
courses. He seemed to me terribly learned then,
clever, and important.
Masha: At home, just before
Father died, it was howling in the chimney.
Irina: Two weeks ago he lost, in December he lost.
Irina: No. Not a kopeck for eight months. (Tchebutykin hasn’t paid rent)
Vershinin: I was graduated from the same school you
were, but was not at the academy; I read a great deal,
but don't know how to choose books, and read, perhaps,
not at all what I should;
Tusenbach: For five years I kept pondering it and finally decided.
Tchebutykin: I've had no time to marry because life
has flashed by me like lightning, and also because I
was madly in love with your mother, who was mar~
ried ....
ACT III
Olga: She's been these thirty years with us.
Olga: For two years he hasn't been drinking and here
all of a sudden he's gone and got drunk.
Tchebutykin: Last Wednesday,
I treated a woman at Zasip--she died, and I'm to
blame for her dying. Yes . . . I knew a little something
twenty.five years ago, but now I don't remember
anything.
Tusenbach: I'm
looking at you now and am reminded of how long
ago once on your saint's day you were all so gay and
happy, talking of the joy of work .... And what a
happy life I dreamed of then! Where is it?
Irina: I kept expecting us to move to Moscow; there
I'd meet my rea! beloved, I dreamed of him, loved
him.Notice how talk of Moscow moves into the past here, and not the future.
ACT IV
MASHA (Sitting down): Nothing .... (A pause) Did
you love my mother?
TCHEBUTYKIN: Very much.
MASHA: And did she love you?
TCHEBUTYKIN (After a pause): That I no longer remember.
MASHA: Is "mine" here? OUf cook Marfa used to talk
about her policeman like that: mine.
Andrei: Oh, where is it, where is gone my past, when I
was young and gay and clever, when my dreams and
thoughts were full of grace, and the present and future
bright with hope? Why is it that when we have barely
begun to live we grow dull, gray, uninteresting, lazy,
indifferent, useless, unhappy .... Our town has been
in existence now for two hundred years, a hundred
thousand people living in it, and there's not one who's
not just like the others, not one that's outstanding either
in the past or in the present, not one scholar, not one
artist, not one who's even faintly remarkable, and
would arouse envy or any passionate desire to imitate
him. They just eat, drink, sleep, and then die .... Others
are born and they, too, eat, drink, sleep and to keep
from sinking into the torpor of boredom, vary their
lives with foul gossip, vodka, cards, chicanery, and the
wives deceive the husbands, while the husbands lie,
pretend not to see anything, hear anything, and an unavoidably
banal influence weighs on the children, and
the divine spark dies in them and they become just as
pitiful, identical corpses as their fathers and mothers
were .... ALSO THE PRESENT
Mentions of the FUTURE
Irina: Brother will be a professor very likely, but all the
same he won't live here.
Olga: Masha will be coming to Moscow for the whole
summer every year.
Tusenbach: The time has come, something tremendous
is hovering over us all, a vast, healing storm
is gathering; it's coming, it's near already, and will
soon dear our society of the laziness, the indifference. the prejudice against work, the rotten boredom.
work and in another twenty-five or thirty years,
man will be working. Everyone!
Solyony: Twenty-five years from now you won't even
on earth, thank God! In two or three years you'll die of "
distemper, or I'll forget myself and put a bullet in your ,
forehead, my angel.
Masha: Just as we won't be remembered either. They'll forget
us.
Vershinin: Yes. They'll forget us. Such is our fate, it
can't be helped. What seems to us serious, significant,
highly important-the time will come when it will be
forgotten or seem unimportant. (A pause) And it's an
interesting thing, we can't possibly tell now just what
will be considered great, or important, and what pitiful,
ridiculous. Didn't the discoveries of Copernicus or, let's
say, Columbus, seem at first unnecessary, ridiculous,
and some shallow nonsense written by a fool seem to
be the truth? And it may be that our present life, to
which we are so reconciled, will seem very strange some
day,' uncomfortable, stupid, not pure enough, perhaps
even sinful. . . .
TUSENBACH: Who knows? Perhaps our life will be called
superior and remembered with respect.
ACT II
Tusenbach: And every day I'll come to the telegraph
office and see you home, I'll do that for ten, twenty,
Years for as long as you don't drive me away ...
Tusenbach: How many years there are left for us
, ahead, along, long row of days, full of my love for
you ....
Irina: If he'd lose everything soon, perhaps we'd go away
from this town. Oh my Lord God, I dream of Mas-cow
every night, I am like someone completely possessed.
(Laughing) We are moving there in June and
from now to June leaves still ... February, March,
April, May .... Almost half a year!
Vershinin: Let's dream ... for example,
of the life that will come after us in two or three hundred
years.
TUSENBACH: Well? After us they will fly in balloons,
the style of coats will change, they will discover the
sixth sense perhaps, and develop it; but life will remain
quite the same, a difficult life, mysterious and
happy. And after a thousand years, man will be sighing
the same: "Ah, how hard it is to live!" and mean~
while, exactly the same as now, he will be afraid of
death and not want to die.
Vershinin: It seems to me ,everything on earth must
change little by little and is already changing before
our very eyes. In two or three hundred, eventually a
thousand, years-it's not a matter of time-a new,
happy life will come. We won't share in that life of
course, but we are living for it now, working, wellsuffering;
we are creating it--and in that alone lies
the purpose of our being and, if you like, our happi- '
ness.
Vershinin: And yet it does
seem to me that what's most important and real I do
know, know solidly. And I'd so like to prove to you
that there's no happiness, there should not be, and
there won't be, for us .... We should only work and
work, and happiness-that's the lot of our remote
descendants. (A pause) Not I, but at least the descendants
of my descendants.
Tusenbach: Not only in two or three hundred but '~ ,
a million years, even, life will be just the sam~ as It
was; it doesn't change, it stays const~t, follow~ng Its
own laws, which are none of our affaIr, or whIch, at
least you will never know_Birds of passage, cranes,
for example, fly and fly, and no matter what thoughts,
great or small, stray through their heads, they wIll fly
just the same and not know why and where. T.hey fly
and will fly, no matter what philosophers spnng up
among them; and they may philosophize as much as
they like so long as they fly. . . .
Verhsinin: Let's suppose
that among the hundred thousand inhabitants of
this town, which evidently is backward and crude,
there are only three such people as you. It is obvious
that you cannot triumph over the dark masses that
surround you; in the course of your life you'll have to
yield little by little and be lost in the crowd of a hun- .
dred thousand; life will stifle you, but just the same
you'll still be there and not without influence; your
kind, after you, will begin to appear, six, perhaps,
then twelve, and so on, until finally your kind will
get to be the majority. After two or three hundred
years, life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful,
wonderful.
Tusenbach: After many years, you say, life on earth.
will be beautiful, wonderful.
Fedotik: So you will not
be in Moscow.
Vershinin: Just
as you won't notice Moscow when you live there.
Happiness we have not and it does not exist, we only
long for it.
Tusenbach: I'm going to work.
Tusenbach: And
I'll go with you, Andrusha, to Moscow, to the university.
ACT III
Anfisa: I'll get feeble and
everybody will say: get out! And where will I go?
Natasha: And when my Sofotchka grows up and enters
high school, I shall be afraid of you.
Olga: I shan't be the headmistress.
Natasha: You will be elected, Olitchka, that's decided.
Vershinin: I grabbed them, ran
and kept thinking one thing: What more will they
have to live through in this world!
Vershinin: And a little more time will pass, some two or three
hundred years, and they will look on this life of ours
now with fear and derision, everything now will
seem then to be all angles and heavy and most inconvenieut
and strange. Oh, what a life that will be,
what a life! (Laughing) Forgive me, I'm philosophizing
again. Allow me to continue, ladies and
gentlemen. I'd like awfully to philosophize, now that
I'm in such a mood for it. (A pause) It's as if everybody
were asleep. And so I say: What a life it will
be! You can just imagine .... Here in town there
are only three of your kind now, but in coming
generations there will be more, always more and
more; a time will come when everything will veer to
you, they will live like you, and then, too, later on
you'll get antiquated, there'll be people springing up
who are better than you ....
Irina: They
are taking the brigade from us, transferring it some·
where far away.
Irina: We'll be left alone then .... Olya!
Irina: Darling, precious, I respect, I value the Baron,
he's a marvelous person, I'll marry him, I consent,
only let's go to Moscow! I beg you, let's go! There's
nothing in the world better than Moscow! Let's go,
Olya! Let's go!
ACT IV
Fedotik: It's not meet again, but good-by, we shall
never meet again.
Irina: Some day we'll run across each other.
FEDOTIK; In ten or fifteen years maybe? But by then
we'l! scarcely know each other, we'l! greet each other
coldly ....
Roday: We won't meet again.
Kulygin: I am afraid you'l! marry there in Poland ....
The Polish wife will embrace you and say; "Kochanyl"
Tchebutykin: In a year they will retire me,
I'I! come back here and live out my little span near
you. Just one short year is left before my pension. (He
puts one newspaper in his pocket and takes out another)
I'I! come here to you and change my life from
the very roots. I'I! become so quiet, right-rightminded,
respectable.
Irina: I have everything all ready, after
dinner I'm sending off my things. The Baron and I
are getting married tomorrow, and tomorrow we are
leaving for the brickyard, and day after tomorrow I'll
be at the school, a new life is beginning. Somehow
God will help me!
Irina: And tomorrow evening I won't be hearing that
"Maiden's Prayer" any more, and won't be meeting
Protopopov ....
TCHEBUTYKIN: I don't know. I might return in a year ...
Though the devil knows .•. it's all the same ... ,
ANDREI: The town will be dead. As if they had covered
it with a cowl.
ANDREI: Our house will be empty. The officer. will go.
you will go, my sister will be married, and I'll be lef.
alone in the house.
Tusenbach: I'll take you
away tomorrow, we will work, we'll be rich, my
dreams will come true. You shall be happy.
Andrei: when I think of the futur~ Oh,.how good it is! I begin
to feel so easy, so free; and in the distance a light
dawns, I see freedom, I see how my children and I are
freed from idleness, from kvass, from goose with cabbage,
from naps after dinner, from despicable sloth .
Olga: By tomorrow there won't be an officer in town; it
will all be a memory and for us, of course, a new life
will begin. . . . (A pause) Everything turns out not
as we'd like to have it. I didn't want to be a headmistress
and yet I became one. Which means we are
not to be in Moscow.
Vershinin: Life is
difficult. It presents itself to many of us as blank and
popeless, and yet, one must admit, it gets always clearer
and easier, and the day is not far off, apparently,
when it will be wholly bright. (Looking at his
watch) It's time for me to go, it's time! Once humanity
was occupied with wars, filling its whole existence
with marches, invasions, conquests, whereas now all
of that is outlived, leaving behind it an enormous
empty space which so far there is nothing to fill;
humanity is searching passionately and, of course,
will find it. Ah, if only it were quicker!
MASHA: We'll
be left alone to begin our life ovet again. We must
live .... We must live ....
IRINA: The time
will come when all will know why all this is, what
these sufferings are for, there will be no secrets-but
meanwhile we must live-must work, only work!
Tomorrow I'm going away alone, I'll teach in the
school and give my whole life to those who need it
perhaps. It's autumn now; winter will soon come
and cover everything with snow, and I'll work,
work ....
OLGA: so gaily, bravely, and one wants to live. Oh, Lord!
Time will pass and we shall be gone forever, they
will forget us, they will forget our faces, voices, and
how many of us there were, but our sufferings will
turn into joy for those who will be living aftet us,
happiness and peace will come on earth, and they
will remember with some gentle word those who
live now and will bless them. Oh, dear sistets, our
life isn't over yet. We shall live! The music plays so
gaily, so joyously, and it looks .as if a little more
and we shall know why we live, why we suffer ..••
If we only knew, if we only knew!
Here's a little more information I've found. I went through the text to see how often characters discuss the past and the future.
Here's what I found:
Mentions of the PAST
Act I:
OLGA: Father died just a year ago today, on the fifth of
May-your saint's day, Irina. It was very cold then and
snowing. I thought I could never live through it; you
were lying in a dead faint. But now a year has passed
and we can talk of it freely; you've a white dress on,
your face is beaming. (The clock strikes twelve) And
the clock was striking then too. (A pause) I remember
as they carried Father along, the band was playing,
and at the cemetery they fired a volley. He was a brigadier
general; but at that there were very few people
walking behind his coffin. It was raining, though, then.
Heavy rain and snow.
Olga: Father was
given his brigade and left Moscow with us eleven years'
ago, and I remember distinctly that early in May, at
this very time, in Moscow everything is in bloom, it's
warm, everything is bathed in sunshine. That's eleven,
years ago, but I remember it all as if we'd left there
yesterday.
Olga: Father trained us to get up at seven.
Tusenbach: I have never worked in my life. I was born
in Petersburg, cold, idle Petersburg, in a family that
never knew any sort of work or worry. I remember
when I came home from military school the footman
pulled off my boots while I fidgeted and my mother
looked adoringly at me, and was surprised when the
others didn't look at me the same way. I was shielded
from work. Though I doubt if they succeeded in shielding
me, I doubt it!
Chebutykin: And I re"'ly never did any· '
thing. Since I left the University, I haven't lifted a '
finger, I've not read a single book even, but just read '
the newspapers ....
Tchebutykin: (To
lUNA) My dear, my little child, I have known you since
the day you were born. . . . I carried you in my
arms .... I loved your dear mother ....
Vershinin: I remember-three girls. Your faces
I don't remember now, but your father, Colonel Prozoroff,
had three little girls, I remember that perfectly, I
saw them with my own eyes. How time does pass! Oh,
oh, how time does pass!
Vershinin: Your father was a battery
commander there, and I was an officer in the same brigade.
Vershinin: I was at school in Moscow and began my
service in Moscow, served there a long time, was finally
assigned a battery here-moved here, as you see. I don't
remember you, as a matter of fact, but only that you
were three sisters. Your father is fresh in my memory; I
can close my eyes now and see him as plain as life. I
. used to pay you calls in Moscow ....
Masha: Now I remember! Do you remember,
Olya, at our house they used to say, "The lovesick"
major." You were a lieutenant then and in love with
someone, and they all teased you for some reason as
the lovesick major.
Masha: But you had only a mustache then ....
Vershinin: But you had only a mustache then ....
Olga: And we lived there, too ....
Vershinin: At one time I lived in Nemetzky Street. I
used to walk from Nemetzky Street to the Red Barracks.
There's a sullen.looking bridge on the way, and
under the bridge you hear the water roaring. A lonely
man feels sick at heart there.
Vershinin: I knew your mother.
Tchebutykin: She was a lovely woman . . . bless her
soul!
Irina: Father was a military man,
but his son chose for himself a learned career.
Masha: Alexander Ignatievich used
to be called the lovesick major and he didn't get a bit
angry.
Andrei: Our father-bless his souI!-loaded us
down with education. It's ridiculous and stupid, but
all the same I must admit that in a year after his
death, I began to fill out and get fat like this, as if my
body were freed from the load.
Vershinin: And all my life I have hung around little
apartments with two chairs, a sofa and a stove that always
smokes. In my life I have lacked just such flowers
..•
Kulygin: A
history of our high school covering fifty years, written
by me.
Irina: But you've already given me a book like that at
Easter.
Kulygin: The Romans were healthy because
they knew how to work, knew how to rest,
they had mens sana in corpore sano. Their life flowed'
on according to fixed forms.
Irina: With us three sisters, life hasn't yet been
beautiful, it has stifled us as weeds do grass
ACT II
Ferapont: And in Moscow, so a contractor was saying
the other day at the District Board, some merchants
were eating bliny; one of them, it seems, ate forty
blinies and died. It was either forty or fifty. I
wouldn't remember.
They married me off when I was eighteen years old,
and I was afraid of my husband because he was a
teacher, and that was when I had barely finished my
courses. He seemed to me terribly learned then,
clever, and important.
Masha: At home, just before
Father died, it was howling in the chimney.
Irina: Two weeks ago he lost, in December he lost.
Irina: No. Not a kopeck for eight months. (Tchebutykin hasn’t paid rent)
Vershinin: I was graduated from the same school you
were, but was not at the academy; I read a great deal,
but don't know how to choose books, and read, perhaps,
not at all what I should;
Tusenbach: For five years I kept pondering it and finally decided.
Tchebutykin: I've had no time to marry because life
has flashed by me like lightning, and also because I
was madly in love with your mother, who was mar~
ried ....
ACT III
Olga: She's been these thirty years with us.
Olga: For two years he hasn't been drinking and here
all of a sudden he's gone and got drunk.
Tchebutykin: Last Wednesday,
I treated a woman at Zasip--she died, and I'm to
blame for her dying. Yes . . . I knew a little something
twenty.five years ago, but now I don't remember
anything.
Tusenbach: I'm
looking at you now and am reminded of how long
ago once on your saint's day you were all so gay and
happy, talking of the joy of work .... And what a
happy life I dreamed of then! Where is it?
Irina: I kept expecting us to move to Moscow; there
I'd meet my rea! beloved, I dreamed of him, loved
him.Notice how talk of Moscow moves into the past here, and not the future.
ACT IV
MASHA (Sitting down): Nothing .... (A pause) Did
you love my mother?
TCHEBUTYKIN: Very much.
MASHA: And did she love you?
TCHEBUTYKIN (After a pause): That I no longer remember.
MASHA: Is "mine" here? OUf cook Marfa used to talk
about her policeman like that: mine.
Andrei: Oh, where is it, where is gone my past, when I
was young and gay and clever, when my dreams and
thoughts were full of grace, and the present and future
bright with hope? Why is it that when we have barely
begun to live we grow dull, gray, uninteresting, lazy,
indifferent, useless, unhappy .... Our town has been
in existence now for two hundred years, a hundred
thousand people living in it, and there's not one who's
not just like the others, not one that's outstanding either
in the past or in the present, not one scholar, not one
artist, not one who's even faintly remarkable, and
would arouse envy or any passionate desire to imitate
him. They just eat, drink, sleep, and then die .... Others
are born and they, too, eat, drink, sleep and to keep
from sinking into the torpor of boredom, vary their
lives with foul gossip, vodka, cards, chicanery, and the
wives deceive the husbands, while the husbands lie,
pretend not to see anything, hear anything, and an unavoidably
banal influence weighs on the children, and
the divine spark dies in them and they become just as
pitiful, identical corpses as their fathers and mothers
were .... ALSO THE PRESENT
Mentions of the FUTURE
Irina: Brother will be a professor very likely, but all the
same he won't live here.
Olga: Masha will be coming to Moscow for the whole
summer every year.
Tusenbach: The time has come, something tremendous
is hovering over us all, a vast, healing storm
is gathering; it's coming, it's near already, and will
soon dear our society of the laziness, the indifference. the prejudice against work, the rotten boredom.
work and in another twenty-five or thirty years,
man will be working. Everyone!
Solyony: Twenty-five years from now you won't even
on earth, thank God! In two or three years you'll die of "
distemper, or I'll forget myself and put a bullet in your ,
forehead, my angel.
Masha: Just as we won't be remembered either. They'll forget
us.
Vershinin: Yes. They'll forget us. Such is our fate, it
can't be helped. What seems to us serious, significant,
highly important-the time will come when it will be
forgotten or seem unimportant. (A pause) And it's an
interesting thing, we can't possibly tell now just what
will be considered great, or important, and what pitiful,
ridiculous. Didn't the discoveries of Copernicus or, let's
say, Columbus, seem at first unnecessary, ridiculous,
and some shallow nonsense written by a fool seem to
be the truth? And it may be that our present life, to
which we are so reconciled, will seem very strange some
day,' uncomfortable, stupid, not pure enough, perhaps
even sinful. . . .
TUSENBACH: Who knows? Perhaps our life will be called
superior and remembered with respect.
ACT II
Tusenbach: And every day I'll come to the telegraph
office and see you home, I'll do that for ten, twenty,
Years for as long as you don't drive me away ...
Tusenbach: How many years there are left for us
, ahead, along, long row of days, full of my love for
you ....
Irina: If he'd lose everything soon, perhaps we'd go away
from this town. Oh my Lord God, I dream of Mas-cow
every night, I am like someone completely possessed.
(Laughing) We are moving there in June and
from now to June leaves still ... February, March,
April, May .... Almost half a year!
Vershinin: Let's dream ... for example,
of the life that will come after us in two or three hundred
years.
TUSENBACH: Well? After us they will fly in balloons,
the style of coats will change, they will discover the
sixth sense perhaps, and develop it; but life will remain
quite the same, a difficult life, mysterious and
happy. And after a thousand years, man will be sighing
the same: "Ah, how hard it is to live!" and mean~
while, exactly the same as now, he will be afraid of
death and not want to die.
Vershinin: It seems to me ,everything on earth must
change little by little and is already changing before
our very eyes. In two or three hundred, eventually a
thousand, years-it's not a matter of time-a new,
happy life will come. We won't share in that life of
course, but we are living for it now, working, wellsuffering;
we are creating it--and in that alone lies
the purpose of our being and, if you like, our happi- '
ness.
Vershinin: And yet it does
seem to me that what's most important and real I do
know, know solidly. And I'd so like to prove to you
that there's no happiness, there should not be, and
there won't be, for us .... We should only work and
work, and happiness-that's the lot of our remote
descendants. (A pause) Not I, but at least the descendants
of my descendants.
Tusenbach: Not only in two or three hundred but '~ ,
a million years, even, life will be just the sam~ as It
was; it doesn't change, it stays const~t, follow~ng Its
own laws, which are none of our affaIr, or whIch, at
least you will never know_Birds of passage, cranes,
for example, fly and fly, and no matter what thoughts,
great or small, stray through their heads, they wIll fly
just the same and not know why and where. T.hey fly
and will fly, no matter what philosophers spnng up
among them; and they may philosophize as much as
they like so long as they fly. . . .
Verhsinin: Let's suppose
that among the hundred thousand inhabitants of
this town, which evidently is backward and crude,
there are only three such people as you. It is obvious
that you cannot triumph over the dark masses that
surround you; in the course of your life you'll have to
yield little by little and be lost in the crowd of a hun- .
dred thousand; life will stifle you, but just the same
you'll still be there and not without influence; your
kind, after you, will begin to appear, six, perhaps,
then twelve, and so on, until finally your kind will
get to be the majority. After two or three hundred
years, life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful,
wonderful.
Tusenbach: After many years, you say, life on earth.
will be beautiful, wonderful.
Fedotik: So you will not
be in Moscow.
Vershinin: Just
as you won't notice Moscow when you live there.
Happiness we have not and it does not exist, we only
long for it.
Tusenbach: I'm going to work.
Tusenbach: And
I'll go with you, Andrusha, to Moscow, to the university.
ACT III
Anfisa: I'll get feeble and
everybody will say: get out! And where will I go?
Natasha: And when my Sofotchka grows up and enters
high school, I shall be afraid of you.
Olga: I shan't be the headmistress.
Natasha: You will be elected, Olitchka, that's decided.
Vershinin: I grabbed them, ran
and kept thinking one thing: What more will they
have to live through in this world!
Vershinin: And a little more time will pass, some two or three
hundred years, and they will look on this life of ours
now with fear and derision, everything now will
seem then to be all angles and heavy and most inconvenieut
and strange. Oh, what a life that will be,
what a life! (Laughing) Forgive me, I'm philosophizing
again. Allow me to continue, ladies and
gentlemen. I'd like awfully to philosophize, now that
I'm in such a mood for it. (A pause) It's as if everybody
were asleep. And so I say: What a life it will
be! You can just imagine .... Here in town there
are only three of your kind now, but in coming
generations there will be more, always more and
more; a time will come when everything will veer to
you, they will live like you, and then, too, later on
you'll get antiquated, there'll be people springing up
who are better than you ....
Irina: They
are taking the brigade from us, transferring it some·
where far away.
Irina: We'll be left alone then .... Olya!
Irina: Darling, precious, I respect, I value the Baron,
he's a marvelous person, I'll marry him, I consent,
only let's go to Moscow! I beg you, let's go! There's
nothing in the world better than Moscow! Let's go,
Olya! Let's go!
ACT IV
Fedotik: It's not meet again, but good-by, we shall
never meet again.
Irina: Some day we'll run across each other.
FEDOTIK; In ten or fifteen years maybe? But by then
we'l! scarcely know each other, we'l! greet each other
coldly ....
Roday: We won't meet again.
Kulygin: I am afraid you'l! marry there in Poland ....
The Polish wife will embrace you and say; "Kochanyl"
Tchebutykin: In a year they will retire me,
I'I! come back here and live out my little span near
you. Just one short year is left before my pension. (He
puts one newspaper in his pocket and takes out another)
I'I! come here to you and change my life from
the very roots. I'I! become so quiet, right-rightminded,
respectable.
Irina: I have everything all ready, after
dinner I'm sending off my things. The Baron and I
are getting married tomorrow, and tomorrow we are
leaving for the brickyard, and day after tomorrow I'll
be at the school, a new life is beginning. Somehow
God will help me!
Irina: And tomorrow evening I won't be hearing that
"Maiden's Prayer" any more, and won't be meeting
Protopopov ....
TCHEBUTYKIN: I don't know. I might return in a year ...
Though the devil knows .•. it's all the same ... ,
ANDREI: The town will be dead. As if they had covered
it with a cowl.
ANDREI: Our house will be empty. The officer. will go.
you will go, my sister will be married, and I'll be lef.
alone in the house.
Tusenbach: I'll take you
away tomorrow, we will work, we'll be rich, my
dreams will come true. You shall be happy.
Andrei: when I think of the futur~ Oh,.how good it is! I begin
to feel so easy, so free; and in the distance a light
dawns, I see freedom, I see how my children and I are
freed from idleness, from kvass, from goose with cabbage,
from naps after dinner, from despicable sloth .
Olga: By tomorrow there won't be an officer in town; it
will all be a memory and for us, of course, a new life
will begin. . . . (A pause) Everything turns out not
as we'd like to have it. I didn't want to be a headmistress
and yet I became one. Which means we are
not to be in Moscow.
Vershinin: Life is
difficult. It presents itself to many of us as blank and
popeless, and yet, one must admit, it gets always clearer
and easier, and the day is not far off, apparently,
when it will be wholly bright. (Looking at his
watch) It's time for me to go, it's time! Once humanity
was occupied with wars, filling its whole existence
with marches, invasions, conquests, whereas now all
of that is outlived, leaving behind it an enormous
empty space which so far there is nothing to fill;
humanity is searching passionately and, of course,
will find it. Ah, if only it were quicker!
MASHA: We'll
be left alone to begin our life ovet again. We must
live .... We must live ....
IRINA: The time
will come when all will know why all this is, what
these sufferings are for, there will be no secrets-but
meanwhile we must live-must work, only work!
Tomorrow I'm going away alone, I'll teach in the
school and give my whole life to those who need it
perhaps. It's autumn now; winter will soon come
and cover everything with snow, and I'll work,
work ....
OLGA: so gaily, bravely, and one wants to live. Oh, Lord!
Time will pass and we shall be gone forever, they
will forget us, they will forget our faces, voices, and
how many of us there were, but our sufferings will
turn into joy for those who will be living aftet us,
happiness and peace will come on earth, and they
will remember with some gentle word those who
live now and will bless them. Oh, dear sistets, our
life isn't over yet. We shall live! The music plays so
gaily, so joyously, and it looks .as if a little more
and we shall know why we live, why we suffer ..••
If we only knew, if we only knew!
10/15/09
My dear Anton,
I'm halfway through reading your Ivanov. When I'm done with that, I will have read all your plays except The Wood Demon, which I hear you detested anyway.
I've really taken apart Three Sisters; my analysis is very thorough. I'm very close to understand exactly how Time works in the text, which is the main focus of all the foci I'm considering. Now I'm just not sure exactly what to DO with it. I believe if I were simply mounting your play as it is written, I could do a pretty good job of it. I know the events, I know the characters' spines and tactics. I know WHAT YOU MEAN very thoroughly- more thoroughly than I think I've known for any other script.
But now, as I want to experiment with how time works for these characters - and by extension for US today - I'm stuck. How can I theatricalize time? I have your words and your people, your places, your issues. What I don't have is a clear concept. What does it mean to wait? What does it mean to long for something that never comes, can never come, will never come? What does it mean to resign yourself to that, or not to? What does it mean to smash the clock, to not know what season it is, to live in the past, to be obsessed with the future, to seize the present? How long is now/forever/then?
And how can I explore that using bodies and words in space?
Tonight and for the next few days, I'll be reading more and more on devised and experimental techniques. I'm sure something will come from that.
I'm halfway through reading your Ivanov. When I'm done with that, I will have read all your plays except The Wood Demon, which I hear you detested anyway.
I've really taken apart Three Sisters; my analysis is very thorough. I'm very close to understand exactly how Time works in the text, which is the main focus of all the foci I'm considering. Now I'm just not sure exactly what to DO with it. I believe if I were simply mounting your play as it is written, I could do a pretty good job of it. I know the events, I know the characters' spines and tactics. I know WHAT YOU MEAN very thoroughly- more thoroughly than I think I've known for any other script.
But now, as I want to experiment with how time works for these characters - and by extension for US today - I'm stuck. How can I theatricalize time? I have your words and your people, your places, your issues. What I don't have is a clear concept. What does it mean to wait? What does it mean to long for something that never comes, can never come, will never come? What does it mean to resign yourself to that, or not to? What does it mean to smash the clock, to not know what season it is, to live in the past, to be obsessed with the future, to seize the present? How long is now/forever/then?
And how can I explore that using bodies and words in space?
Tonight and for the next few days, I'll be reading more and more on devised and experimental techniques. I'm sure something will come from that.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
13 October 2009
Dear Sir,
I thought you might like to read this quote from Katie Mitchell from an interview with her when she was working on the play:
"You’ll notice in the play there's a lot pre-occupation from Chekhov about timepieces. One of the main events in the play is when an old buffer who hangs about in the house (and) he rents a room where the three sisters live. He drops a priceless clock on the floor and then in Act 4 everyone seems to spend all the time looking at watches. And I suppose the man who was writing it - Anton Chekhov - was also thinking a lot about time because he was dying, and he was living in Yalta with tuberculosis. He was very aware of every second that he had available to live. So the play is fantastic because it's both full of the despair of the man who knows he's dying, and the absolutely joy and delight of a man who knows that (fact) and so is full of excitement about every second that he's alive."
I thought you might like to read this quote from Katie Mitchell from an interview with her when she was working on the play:
"You’ll notice in the play there's a lot pre-occupation from Chekhov about timepieces. One of the main events in the play is when an old buffer who hangs about in the house (and) he rents a room where the three sisters live. He drops a priceless clock on the floor and then in Act 4 everyone seems to spend all the time looking at watches. And I suppose the man who was writing it - Anton Chekhov - was also thinking a lot about time because he was dying, and he was living in Yalta with tuberculosis. He was very aware of every second that he had available to live. So the play is fantastic because it's both full of the despair of the man who knows he's dying, and the absolutely joy and delight of a man who knows that (fact) and so is full of excitement about every second that he's alive."
Thursday, October 1, 2009
1 October, 2009
My dear Sir,
My research into your play keeps mounting, and the sheer amount of material for me to sift through is a daunting task. The dining table at my house is covered in stacks of books and printouts more than a foot high. I'm currently focusing on discovering just what life was like in rural Russia in the lat 19th Century, but most of what I can find is about peasant life. This has been remarkably interesting, particularly in regards to Natasha's background (though she wasn't really a peasant, was she), but what about bourgeois day to day activities? I've new perspective on the "sending away of the mummers" in Act II, though. Apparently, the towns and small cities swelled at Shrovetide, as young peasants swarmed to town for the festivities. But these weren't necessarily the happy carnivals I imagined. The "carolers" often included young hooligans, and their songs were comprised of veiled and not-so veiled threats of what would happen should the homeowners not give them money. Real violence could occur, and street-brawls were not uncommon during the festival period. So when Natasha tells them not to come, there's a threat there of outside attack that I hadn't considered before.
I'm finding it difficult to find ways to explore your use of time theatrically. I printed up a timeline of events mentioned in the play, beginning with the founding of higher education in Moscow, since there is the argument over how many universities are in the city. It begins in 1682 and runs through 2198. I placed the action of the first act in 1894, based on the year it was written and the actual calendar, which I was able to do based on Shrovetide Thursday in relation to Easter and other events mentioned. The timeline is fifteen pages long, all taped together like a scroll. Since some years contain many more events than others, if each year took up the same amount of page space, it would be well over 258 pages! I've found it to be an extremely useful visual reference for the way the people of the play relate to time themselves. What's waiting a few months versus 258 pages of blank space?
This week, we conducted an experiment with time and voice that yielded some interesting results. Taking three different translations of Irina's "I want to work" speech in Act I, each of three actresses read the speech concurrently, taking care to pace themselves so they were in generally the same thought pattern at the same time. They spaced themselves around the space, and the experience was quite exciting. While individual words and sentences could not be discerned, the meaning of the speech remained intact. The thought patterns and individual beats within the speech were still immediately accessible, though many of the words themselves were lost. Time seem expanded and circular and ultimately vacant. The effect was similar to what is called "bullet time" in film, when the camera moves into extreme slow motion and pans around an object in motion, as in The Matrix films. I think today we'll do some exploration on waiting. What does it mean to wait? How do we experience it?
Thank you for not sending me a cease and desist letter, or for telling me that my experiment is one of which you disapprove. I was afraid you'd tell me to stop, or at the very least not to write to you anymore. I assume in your silence that I have your support. The path ahead is wild, and exciting, and unknown, and I'm more than a little scared. Your implied appreciation and interest is a great solace for me.
Yours,
Curtis Young
My research into your play keeps mounting, and the sheer amount of material for me to sift through is a daunting task. The dining table at my house is covered in stacks of books and printouts more than a foot high. I'm currently focusing on discovering just what life was like in rural Russia in the lat 19th Century, but most of what I can find is about peasant life. This has been remarkably interesting, particularly in regards to Natasha's background (though she wasn't really a peasant, was she), but what about bourgeois day to day activities? I've new perspective on the "sending away of the mummers" in Act II, though. Apparently, the towns and small cities swelled at Shrovetide, as young peasants swarmed to town for the festivities. But these weren't necessarily the happy carnivals I imagined. The "carolers" often included young hooligans, and their songs were comprised of veiled and not-so veiled threats of what would happen should the homeowners not give them money. Real violence could occur, and street-brawls were not uncommon during the festival period. So when Natasha tells them not to come, there's a threat there of outside attack that I hadn't considered before.
I'm finding it difficult to find ways to explore your use of time theatrically. I printed up a timeline of events mentioned in the play, beginning with the founding of higher education in Moscow, since there is the argument over how many universities are in the city. It begins in 1682 and runs through 2198. I placed the action of the first act in 1894, based on the year it was written and the actual calendar, which I was able to do based on Shrovetide Thursday in relation to Easter and other events mentioned. The timeline is fifteen pages long, all taped together like a scroll. Since some years contain many more events than others, if each year took up the same amount of page space, it would be well over 258 pages! I've found it to be an extremely useful visual reference for the way the people of the play relate to time themselves. What's waiting a few months versus 258 pages of blank space?
This week, we conducted an experiment with time and voice that yielded some interesting results. Taking three different translations of Irina's "I want to work" speech in Act I, each of three actresses read the speech concurrently, taking care to pace themselves so they were in generally the same thought pattern at the same time. They spaced themselves around the space, and the experience was quite exciting. While individual words and sentences could not be discerned, the meaning of the speech remained intact. The thought patterns and individual beats within the speech were still immediately accessible, though many of the words themselves were lost. Time seem expanded and circular and ultimately vacant. The effect was similar to what is called "bullet time" in film, when the camera moves into extreme slow motion and pans around an object in motion, as in The Matrix films. I think today we'll do some exploration on waiting. What does it mean to wait? How do we experience it?
Thank you for not sending me a cease and desist letter, or for telling me that my experiment is one of which you disapprove. I was afraid you'd tell me to stop, or at the very least not to write to you anymore. I assume in your silence that I have your support. The path ahead is wild, and exciting, and unknown, and I'm more than a little scared. Your implied appreciation and interest is a great solace for me.
Yours,
Curtis Young
24 September, 2009
My dear Sir,
I should like to introduce myself as a graduate student working with your plays. I study directing for the theatre, a notion that though new in your time has since become an accepted and important discipline over the past century. I hope you don’t mind receiving the occasional letter from me. Feel free to throw them away, or burn them, though I hope you might be willing to share your ideas with me and help me to critique my own.
My project concerns your play Three Sisters. I’m afraid I’ll be doing all sorts of things to it that you might not approve of, though since you’re dead that doesn’t concern me too much. I know you felt that Stanislavsky’s realism didn’t do the play justice, and I think you’ll find my own approach somewhat less bothersome in that way. I hope that you would find my work at least an interesting investigation into the text, though we won’t actually be playing it as you wrote it. In fact, I am using your words as a “jumping off point,” and I really have no idea where the investigation will lead.
In my initial research, there are a number of questions I’m having difficulty answering. Just how rural is this town? Vershinin mentions 100,000 people, but is that some conjectural town or the one they’re actually in? If you’ve based the location on Perm, well, Perm had nowhere near 100,000 people at the time. I know the house is in town, or close to it, since Irina is able to walk home from her job, and the fire brigade need to go through the garden to get to the river for water to put out the fire. And what is the layout of this house? If Chebutykin lives downstairs, just how does that work? I ordered a book on Russian architecture, but it turned out to be a coffee table book and not much help. It does help with some details, but I was hoping to find a large home in a small town, not apartments in St. Petersburg. How far is your home in Yalta from the town itself? Could you walk to the market?
All these people talk a lot about time, don’t they. Time time time. That’s what I’m going to be looking at. You break a clock right in the middle of the script, and it’s sort of glossed over. That’s pretty important, isn’t it? I think we may begin with that- don’t be angry. We’re playing with your play; I think you might like that idea.
At rehearsal this week, we’ve been reading the play out loud. I’ve got four women and two men, and they’re taking turns reading each part. I’m so glad to find that they’re laughing at most of the things I laugh at. They especially enjoy moments when multiple conversations are going on, but are arranged to comment on each other. We’ve had a few moments of “I can’t believe she SAID that!” All the different timelines happening at once on a sort of micro-level. They whirl around each other, combine and converge. The actors especially loved the little fit Masha throws when Vershinin goes home to deal with his wife’s latest suicide attempt.
And we have another one of your doctors, as different from Astrov as can be, but with another dead patient. I wonder, did you have a patient who died during treatment that obsessed you? Maybe one of the biographies will tell me. I’ve amassed a great pile of books on my kitchen table, and sifting through them is a daunting task. And I’ve still got to read Turgenev and Gogol. Find some folk songs or popular songs of the day.
I believe I may have taken up enough of your time today. I’ll write again in a few days when I’ve finished the reading I’m doing on rural Russia. We’re quite removed from that society here in 21st Century America, and I know I’ll have some more questions for you.
Gratefully yours,
Curtis Young
I should like to introduce myself as a graduate student working with your plays. I study directing for the theatre, a notion that though new in your time has since become an accepted and important discipline over the past century. I hope you don’t mind receiving the occasional letter from me. Feel free to throw them away, or burn them, though I hope you might be willing to share your ideas with me and help me to critique my own.
My project concerns your play Three Sisters. I’m afraid I’ll be doing all sorts of things to it that you might not approve of, though since you’re dead that doesn’t concern me too much. I know you felt that Stanislavsky’s realism didn’t do the play justice, and I think you’ll find my own approach somewhat less bothersome in that way. I hope that you would find my work at least an interesting investigation into the text, though we won’t actually be playing it as you wrote it. In fact, I am using your words as a “jumping off point,” and I really have no idea where the investigation will lead.
In my initial research, there are a number of questions I’m having difficulty answering. Just how rural is this town? Vershinin mentions 100,000 people, but is that some conjectural town or the one they’re actually in? If you’ve based the location on Perm, well, Perm had nowhere near 100,000 people at the time. I know the house is in town, or close to it, since Irina is able to walk home from her job, and the fire brigade need to go through the garden to get to the river for water to put out the fire. And what is the layout of this house? If Chebutykin lives downstairs, just how does that work? I ordered a book on Russian architecture, but it turned out to be a coffee table book and not much help. It does help with some details, but I was hoping to find a large home in a small town, not apartments in St. Petersburg. How far is your home in Yalta from the town itself? Could you walk to the market?
All these people talk a lot about time, don’t they. Time time time. That’s what I’m going to be looking at. You break a clock right in the middle of the script, and it’s sort of glossed over. That’s pretty important, isn’t it? I think we may begin with that- don’t be angry. We’re playing with your play; I think you might like that idea.
At rehearsal this week, we’ve been reading the play out loud. I’ve got four women and two men, and they’re taking turns reading each part. I’m so glad to find that they’re laughing at most of the things I laugh at. They especially enjoy moments when multiple conversations are going on, but are arranged to comment on each other. We’ve had a few moments of “I can’t believe she SAID that!” All the different timelines happening at once on a sort of micro-level. They whirl around each other, combine and converge. The actors especially loved the little fit Masha throws when Vershinin goes home to deal with his wife’s latest suicide attempt.
And we have another one of your doctors, as different from Astrov as can be, but with another dead patient. I wonder, did you have a patient who died during treatment that obsessed you? Maybe one of the biographies will tell me. I’ve amassed a great pile of books on my kitchen table, and sifting through them is a daunting task. And I’ve still got to read Turgenev and Gogol. Find some folk songs or popular songs of the day.
I believe I may have taken up enough of your time today. I’ll write again in a few days when I’ve finished the reading I’m doing on rural Russia. We’re quite removed from that society here in 21st Century America, and I know I’ll have some more questions for you.
Gratefully yours,
Curtis Young
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