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."