My Friend, Anton
Production Blog
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The following blog is the production journal of Steve Cleberg. It covers the development of his production of Flashback Theater's production of Anton Chekhov's play, Uncle Vanya. Flashback's production will be an adaptation conceived and written by Cleberg produced in February of 2024.
My Friend, Anton
Part One
I think that Anton Chekhov and I might have been good friends if our paths had crossed. There are similarities. We’re both congenial introverts with civil demeanors and surly spleens. Our friendship probably wouldn’t have put too much of a burden of presence on each other. But it’s what I imagine our differences are that would have forged an affinity.
I am on the books to direct Anton Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya” for Flashback Theater in December of the 2023/2024 season. It’s a play that’s been on my wish list for over 35 years. My first experience with a Chekhov play was as a first-year college student. I went to Minneapolis one weekend with a group of people in the theatre department to take in some shows.
We saw his play “The Seagull” at the Twin Cities’, Theatre in the Round. I confess that my first experience with Chekhov was befuddling. After the show, some of my classmates went into a parody of the play, parroting what they referred to as “Chekhovian Acting.” I learned that they stole the bit from a Saturday Night Live sketch that Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and Dan Akroyd did.
“If his plays are so plotless and mannered,” I wondered, “why is he considered one of the Fathers of Modern Drama?” It took a trip down a long path for me to arrive at an answer to that question.
Anton Chekhov was born in Russia in 1860. His family arose from serfdom to emerge as the proprietors of a grocery store. Chekhov’s father was also the choir director at the village church. It was Chekhov’s mother, however, who influenced the children with her love of storytelling. Anton Chekhov would go on to become one of the most respected short story writers of his time.
His father’s bad luck, and his own overdeveloped sense of responsibility, prompted the young Chekhov to study medicine and eventually become a doctor by trade. He also wrote short stories for magazines to support his entire family. He did anything for a kopek, but he was also fiercely independent and held high standards for both his medical practice and his writing.
I read the major works of Chekhov in college. I performed multiple roles in the Neil Simon comedy, The Good Doctor, which was based on a few of Chekhov’s short stories. After I did some preliminary study of Chekhov’s plays, I came to appreciate my reading of “The Seagull.” However, there was something about his play “The Three Sisters” that captivated me.
While I was studying the background for “The Cherry Orchard,” which would be my next Chekhov reading assignment, I once again came across the name of the stage director who made Chekhov’s plays famous, Constantine Stanislavski. My life was about to change.
My Friend, Anton
Part Two
Constantine Stanislavski is the pioneer of everything we do as actors. We can reject the Method acting approach, which is often referred to synonymously with Stanislavski, but there is nothing we do as actors in 2023 that isn’t influenced by this early 20th century Russian theatre teacher/director. Even the young Russian director, Ysevolod Meyerhold, who rebelled against what Stanislavski did at the Moscow Art Theatre, was doing his own version of the master’s “System of Physical Actions.”
What we know about Method acting is derived from stories about actors who are always “in character,” even when the cameras aren’t rolling. This is, in fact, an eccentricity adopted by actors who claim to be Method actors. Method acting isn’t what Stanislavski taught. What we know as Method acting is an American version of Stanislavski’s approach as taught by Lee Strasberg of the pioneering Group Theatre during the 1930’s. The difference was pointed out by Strasberg himself when an actor who visited with Stanislavski in Russia, returned and told Strasberg that the Russian director disagreed with what was taught at the Group Theatre. To which, Strasberg replied, “We’re not doing the Stanislavski method, we’re doing the Strasberg method.”
Anton Chekhov and Stanislavski had an uneasy relationship. After viewing a rehearsal of “The Seagull,” Chekhov complained to a friend that Stanislavski was ruining his “comedy” by making all of the characters “weepy.” The fact that Chekhov considered his plays as comedies can cause American theatre people to raise an eyebrow. Comedies that include depression, social paralysis and decay, dashed desires and even suicide? Herein lies the genius of Chekhov as a dramatist.
Stanislavski’s approach to acting was an attempt to reveal the inner life of the characters through their outward actions. Because our emotions are internal processes that can be manifested physically, it’s natural that his early emphasis would be on human emotions. However, Stanislavski sought to recreate genuine emotions rather than the theatrically generated emotional shows that were on display in the popular melodramas of the time. Generating genuine emotions, though a monumental development for theatre, missed the nuances that lie within the context of Chekhov’s vision of humanity.
Chekhov’s short stories and plays are frank and insightful observations of the human condition. These observations are medical in nature, no doubt influenced by Chekhov’s experience as a doctor. His aesthetic diagnoses were honest and, at times, brutal. His characters aspire to idealism but constantly undercut their own attempts to rise to their own vision. To Chekhov, this was a laughably absurd quality of human nature that manifested itself constantly. It was a motif that Chekhov set off within a parody of the popular theatre style of the period, melodrama. We’ll see how he deftly managed this feat next time.
My Friend, Anton
Part Three
Anton Chekhov wrote self-consciously about Russians. Chekhov once revealed in a letter to a friend that, “young Russian men always idealize their past.” He felt that the purpose for this was so that they could justify wallowing in their present misery.
This occurs again and again in “Uncle Vanya.” In the opening scene, Doctor Astrov asks the old maid on the estate if he’s changed. “Well. . . when you got here you were good looking. . . and young, of course. And you drink more now than you did when you first got here,” the maid tells him candidly. Rather than take offense, Astrov agrees and complains about his life.
“I could have been as great as Dostoyevsky, Schopenhauer,” Vanya cries out at one point in the action of the play. “Instead, I’ve sunk the best years of my life into a sewer.” Not the stuff of classic comedy.
Melodrama was one of the most popular theatre genres of the 19th century. It arose during the Industrial Revolution to take advantage of the regular, disposable income that was becoming available to an emerging class of factory workers. To cater to this new uneducated audience, the action of melodrama was simple and predictable. The characters in melodrama were stereotypical and easily identifiable. Elements of both comedy and drama were intermixed. Melodrama presented a clearly delineated conflict between good and evil. It confirmed the values held by its audience. In the same way that today’s sophisticated cinephiles look down their noses on immensely popular comic book movies, the upper classes of the late 19th century distained the plebeian lack of aesthetic in the melodramas of the time.
Chekhov’s first play was entitled, “The Wood Demon.” It had all the earmarks of melodrama, but it also had the modern influences that were evident in his short stories. The early criticisms of this debut admired the melodramatic elements of the play and suggested that Chekhov needed to focus less on the elements that worked in his short stories. Following the play’s premiere, Chekhov vowed never to write for the theatre again. It wouldn’t be the first time he would make such a vow.
In fact, “Uncle Vanya” is an updated revision of “The Wood Demon,” containing most of the same characters. Many scenes from “Uncle Vanya were taken verbatim from “The Wood Demon.” Rather than follow the critics advice from the earlier play, Chekhov ingeniously parodied the melodramatic elements of his first play to create a kind of absurdist comedy.
In the earlier play, Vanya character commits suicide in pure melodramatic fashion. In “Uncle Vanya,” he hilariously, if pitifully, empties out his pistol trying to shoot the villain of the play. Missing the mark wildly with each shot.
Humiliated by his ineptness, he worries to the doctor the next day, “So, what now? Do I wait until the authorities come and arrest me for attempted murder?” The doctor tells him flatly that he won’t be arrested. To which Vanya shouts out, “Oh, my God. It’s because I’m insane, isn’t it?” The doctor rubs salt in the wound by assuring Vanya that he isn’t insane, just foolish. Vanya is robbed of a humiliation possessing even the slightest hint of profundity.
In “The Wood Demon,” all of the characters are melodramatically matched into the likely romantic couples. In “Uncle Vanya,” the status of the characters doesn’t change. They comically and pathetically fall back into old patterns, undramatically succumbing to dashed hopes and the meanness of everyday life. Chekhov turns simple melodrama into tragicomedy at its most profound.
My Friend, Anton
Part Four
Another characteristic of melodrama was the importance of sentiment and openly displayed emotions. The hero was admired for his ability to display the proper emotion in every situation. The damsel in distress was constantly responding to each crisis with a high level of emotion, thrilling audiences. The villain’s cold and unemotional demeanor was a large part of what made him a villain. The emotions weren’t genuine, however. They were as over-the-top as the emotions displayed by your favorite rock star.
Chekhov keenly observed the buoyantly emotional nature of the Russian people. They were not only effusive but able to switch from one emotion to the next on a dime. A Russian was capable of sobbing at one moment and then wiping their tears, smiling broadly and telling a joke in the next. This characteristic struck Chekhov as comic fodder.
The characters in Chekhov’s plays go from demanding the center of attention to submerging themselves into the role of a rapt audience member. His plays are a kind of dynamic and organic play-within-a-play throughout. Chekhov’s plays appropriated the emotional nature of melodrama in a theatrically satirical manner, spoofing Russian culture.
My friend Anton had taken a dying, but still popular, genre of theatre and infused it with stageworthy qualities. He found a way to intermingle the forward-thinking use of irony and realism of his short stories into stage action. His insightful point of view was creating a theatre that would eventually dub him as one of the “Fathers of Modern Drama.”
The subtle nuances of Chekhov’s “comedies” are still lost on most American productions. They are typically played entirely as dramas. As a result, much of the comedy seems simply incongruous. The sudden shifts of emotions are not seen as typical but eccentric.
In order to bring the power of his plays to the surface, a genuine stage world must be created. The characters are not eccentric but entirely human. They are just as self-centered as we are. Like us, they vacillate wildly between what they want and their desire for comfort. They strive to be good people but are beaten down by the weight of everyday existence. They possess noble aspirations without the energy to sustain them. They, themselves, are their most potent enemies.
At the time that Anton Chekhov was writing for the stage, Constantine Stanislavski was transitioning theatre from simple entertainment to an art form. His approach was electrifying for its simplicity. Finding a path toward recreating reality through a system of genuinely pursued objectives that revealed the inner life of the characters became and acting technique. It would seem that Chekhov’s desire to create reality on stage would be a perfect fit for Stanislavski’s vision. However, the two men couldn’t have been more different. Perhaps this is why I think that Anton and I could have been good friends.
My Friend, Anton
Part Five
Constantine Stanislavski was a quintessential theatre person. Flamboyant, full of life and prone to purple prose. Anton Chekhov was introverted, taciturn and moody. Whenever Chekhov attended rehearsals for one of his plays at the Moscow Art Theatre, he would wearily brace himself for the showy speeches and fanfare that Stanislavski would regale upon him when he arrived. Stanislavski demonstrated unqualified reverence for his staging of Chekhov’s plays. Chekhov always had more complaints than praise.
The literary author turned playwright couldn’t understand why his plays weren’t simply performed as they were written. The control that Chekhov was able to maintain with his short stories seemed to fail him in the collaborative process of theatre. It's fair to say that Chekhov didn’t see the world with the same eyes as everyone else. His work was acutely insightful but selective. In other words, he viewed the world as the gifted artist that he was.
Stanislavski’s working process began with his construction of what he referred to as a “score” for the production. In this score, he recorded the series of actions that would make up the outward presentation of the play. This created what is referred to as the through-line-of-action. The coordination of these actions and their motivations was designed to take place within what Stanislavski referred to as the mise en scène of the play.
The score of the play was a detailed description of the kind of paper blocking that directors do today in preparation for rehearsals. Stanislavski’s score would also include specific stage business and how these outward choices would reveal the inner life of the character.
Mise en scène is a French term that translates to “put into the scene.” It is essentially the production elements of the play. The placement of the set walls, furniture and other set pieces played a very important role in Stanislavski’s realism. This may seem elementary to today’s directors, but it was a startlingly original approach to theatre at the time.
In the melodramatic style of staging in the 19th century, the leading actor would stage the production. In order to put themselves in the best light, the star would arrange the other characters on stage in less prominent locations. There was very little movement or interaction between characters. Stanislavski dared to stage actors sitting in easy chairs, having conversations at a table, or looking out a window as they spoke and, in doing so, presented characters in situations that you would see in real life.
Uncle Vanya was staged from such a score. We see characters sitting and drinking tea from a samovar, which was a Russian hot drink urn. By engaging in this simple action, they reveal their inner despair. When Vanya and Sonya end the play engaging in the simple act of putting the estate accounts in order, we witness their lives coming apart. The use of everyday actions to reveal the depths of the human soul has been referred to as “poetic realism.” This will be my approach to Flashback Theater’s “Uncle Vanya.”
My Friend, Anton
Part Six
Chekhov once said, “The function of art is not to solve life’s problems but to present them accurately.” In taking this approach, he was in the company of William Shakespeare who depicted villains who gain our begrudging admiration and decent people whose weaknesses wreak havoc with those around them. In other words, he created characters whose inner life generated the full range of humanity.
One of the early criticisms of the short story writer turned dramatist was that his plays were plotless. Chekhov seemed to intentionally allow his work to fall into the anticlimactic. His most dramatic scenes often took place off stage. But Chekhov’s plays created truth through realism following a very strict set of rules.
"One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep," was among Chekhov’s most famous rules for playwriting. He also charted the action of his play in such a way that a profound disruption would occur toward the end of Act Three.
His characters often engage in small talk, boring the thrill-seeking audiences raised on melodrama. However, it was what his characters didn’t say that held the most profound expressions of his art. Staging Chekhov’s work requires the director to allow the subtext of a scene bubble to the surface. Sometimes this occurs comically. At other times, heartbreakingly.
Stanislavski described the art of acting as pursuing the character’s objective truthfully, within an imaginary set of given circumstances. The given circumstances of Chekhov’s plays lie beneath the surface. There is a superficial premise that prompts the plot, but the director of “Uncle Vanya” must direct the play with respect to the inner conflicts of the characters. The battles that rage within the characters are indirectly manifested by the incongruous, often absurd, conflicts that occur between the characters.
The underbelly of “Uncle Vanya” is in the conflict between idealism vs. reality. Each character aspires to achieve an ideal. Vanya envisions a happy life with the beautiful young wife of the family patriarch. Doctor Astrov fancies himself a cynical realist but carries within him a passion to save the Russian forests. Sonya sees the doctor’s passion as a perfect fit for her sensibilities and envisions a future marriage with the doctor, working with him by his side. The professor feels he has reached the peak of his academic career and wishes to rest on his laurels. Vanya’s mother has hitched her wagon to the professor’s star and imagines that her efforts in assisting him will go on forever. All these delusions are embodied in the professor’s lovely but shallow wife, Helena. Only the level-headed family servant, Marina, recognizes the impending toll that reality will take on the inner dramas these self-deceptive characters are playing out.
My Friend, Anton
Part Seven
Shakespearean scholar, Marjorie Garber, stated that a play exists in three times. The time that it is set, the time in which it was written and at every given time that the play is performed. Her conjecture was designed to illustrate the universal nature of Shakespeare’s plays. However, a director would be wise to consider this framework for any play they wish to stage.
Chekhov originally wrote “Uncle Vanya” in 1889. But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it was an entirely different play at this early juncture. Entitled “The Wood Demon,” the early play was a melodrama intended to appeal to a large audience. It had minimal success and was rejected by the serious art theatres at the time.
After this early attempt at the story of these characters, Chekhov’s play, “The Seagull,” was staged by Stanislavski at the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre with enormous success. When Stanislavski wanted a follow up to “The Seagull,” Chekhov chose to rewrite “The Wood Demon” for a smaller cast and change of emphasis. In 1898, “Uncle Vanya” was presented successfully at the Moscow Art Theatre.
“Uncle Vanya” had many of the same characters that were in the original production, but their stories were richer and more profound. The revisions shifted the play from a melodrama to a uniquely Chekhovian tragicomedy. This may be the result of the changes that occurred in Russia from 1889 to 1898.
In the year that “The Wood Demon” was written, the ruler was Tsar Alexander III. He was preceded by his father, Alexander II. His father is notable for freeing the serfs and liberalizing the government of Russia. This was in response to a world-wide shift toward a more democratic ethos. Alexander II was trying to take steps to keep his Tsarist government relevant. He didn’t move fast enough for the Socialist radicals and there were many assassination attempts. He was finally killed by a bomb in 1881.
Alexander III took a more brutal approach and reversed some of the progressive actions of his father. Most Russians were concerned that the movement toward a more modern country would now be put to a stop. By the time that “Uncle Vanya” was written and performed in 1898, Russia was in a transitional period that was leading to revolution. There were those among the landed gentry who ignored this condition. There were those among the Russian intelligentsia, like Chekhov, who sensed that the traditional Russian way of life was coming to an end.
The transition in the difference in tone between “The Wood Demon” and “Uncle Vanya” reflects this growing sense of tension. The scene in which Dr. Astrov tries to show, through a series of maps, how the growing factories are swallowing up farmland is met with confusion by the shallow beauty Helena. Astrov puts his maps away in resignation. Chekhov set his play in the year that it was written. He was depicting the Russian people of his time and how their way of life was eroding without their knowledge or concern.
How can this narrative about a Russian family more concerned for their own petty interests rather than the decline of their way of life have relevance for an audience member sitting in Somerset, Kentucky at the end of the year 2023? That will be covered in the next post.
My Friend, Anton
Part Eight
Like all of Chekhov’s late plays, “Uncle Vanya” was a foreboding work of art. The events that occurred after the play was first produced in 1898 played out in Russian culture most profoundly. By the turn of the 20th century, the landed gentry of the period were viewed as a bourgeois class that needed to end. This occurred during the socialist revolution toward the close of World War I. A traditional way of Russian life had come to an end.
At the end of 2023, our culture is also going through a transitional period. Someday, there may be a term that captures the essence of the current period that follows what was referred to in the 20th century as “modernism.” The contemporary term used to identify it is “post-modernism.”
Post-modernism is an ethos that is striving for something new. In this struggle, it rejects the institutions of the past. In the same way that modernism rejected religion in favor of science, post-modernism’s efforts are moving toward a redefinition of the conclusions of modern science. It does so by taking apart the tenets of the traditional aspects of society and experimenting with new assumptions, thereby redefining social structures. The term used to identify this process is “deconstruction.”
Influenced by philosophers of the 20th century, post-modern thinkers have arrived at the conclusion that any experience or phenomenon is subject to an infinite number of interpretations. The standards of logic and reason as the ultimate measure of universal interpretation is called into question. Since social constructs are arbitrary, there is no legitimate authority regarding truth. Truth is determined by the individual’s perception of truth. As a result, what is true is determined by the individual.
In some ways, this is an extraordinarily egalitarian view of reality. However, there has been a growing interest among many in post-modern society to pursue the same socialist viewpoints that were emerging in Russia in 1898. This makes Chekhov’s exploration of Vanya’s family as a microcosm of society relevant today.
In view of this analysis, I have chosen to design the set for “Uncle Vanya” in a way that borrows from and defies the conventional box set. The box set is a standard for 20th century realistic play productions. A box set was a scenic design that depicted the interior of a room. However, the space for “Uncle Vanya” will contain only door frames and window frames, absenting walls. An empty picture frame will hang above the piano. The stage will be backed by a black curtain.
This approach will visually represent a way of life that is disappearing. It will also be a visual deconstruction of the traditional setting of most realistic plays. The characters will behave as if the walls in the stage space are there, creating an unsettling incongruity for the audience. The black curtains will reinforce the funeral aspect of the stage proceedings.
I will discuss this production concept more specifically in the next post.
My Friend, Anton
Part Nine
When the Moscow Art Theatre produced “Uncle Vanya,” it had four long acts with a different setting for each act. This was the standard for the late nineteenth century. Stage carpenters were hired to construct and shift scenery for the performances. Often, scene changes took place behind the front curtain while an ancillary entertainment occurred in front of the curtain.
My adaptation of “Uncle Vanya” sets all the action of the play in the single sitting room of the Serebrakoff summer home. The four acts have been abridged into four scenes with brief bridges between them. Using Chekhov’s device of employing simple and direct language, I have been able to hone the scenes down to a leaner retelling of the story within a more cinematic rendering.
As I mentioned in my last post, the setting will be a skeleton version of the interior of the room. A window seat with only a window frame behind it will sit at stage right of the stage space. Just up stage of the window seat, arranged at about a 60-degree angle from the front of the stage, will be a standard door frame that will represent the front door of the home. A six-foot-wide archway will be located up center. It will ostensibly represent a passage to the other rooms of the house. The black curtain that will hang behind the entire space will also serve as the curtains of the archway.
A chair with perhaps a small table will rest stage right of the archway. Stage left of the archway will be an upright piano, above which will hang a picture frame devoid of any portrait. An angled door frame will sit at stage left of the piano and serve as the entrance to the professor’s study. Stage left will be occupied by a cupboard, on which the samovar will sit prominently. From here the maid, Marina, will serve members of the household. It may be necessary to locate a stool next to the cupboard to offer an additional physical level for any actor who may be playing in that area.
There will be a small sofa or bench of the period at right of center. A table with three chairs will sit left of center. Care will be taken to create such properties as pamphlets, dishes, doctor’s bag, ink wells, medicine bottles, ledger books, and other items as historically accurate as possible. This will emphasize the realism of the action that occurs within the fragmented box set. The tension between realistic detail and the abstract background will be designed to reflect the unsettling relationships between the characters and enhance the poetic realism of the play.
It’s been said that a good floor plan can stage a play for a director. This arrangement will tie down the ends of the space and create active paths through which the characters may move. It will also provide locations that will yield opportunities for appropriate stage compositions. Creating this kind of set design provides a stage space that will communicate the progression of relationships, intentions, and mood of the play.
My Friend, Anton
Part Ten
In Chekhov’s time, theatre artists were enamored by the advances of technology during the industrial revolution. From this period grew such theatrical innovations as stage lighting, movable scenery, special effects and other mechanical stage crafts. While Stanislavski was committed to a new realistic theatre, he availed himself of these innovations inventively.
Chekhov’s shorts stories were admired for the way that they incorporated such elements as color, attitudes, irony and action into the narrative. These seemed to lend themselves to the art of theatre. Another element that played an important role in Chekhov’s literary efforts was how ingeniously he employed the element of sound.
The use of sound effects has always been central to theatre production. It can add an additional dimension to the action of a play. By the late 19th century, Stanislavski employed sound design as an important addition to his mise en scène.
Chekhov included many sound cues within the pages of his scripts. Famously ending his masterpiece, “The Cherry Orchard,” with the subtle sound of a string breaking to represent the Russian landowners break from social relevance was typical. In “Uncle Vanya,” Chekhov includes the off-stage sound of the watchman tapping a stick around the perimeter of the estate to alert any possible predator, human or animal, to stay away. This was the custom of the period, but it also created tension for the audience of the time, being a reminder of potential danger. Since there is no modern context for this sound, I’ll not include it in our production of “Uncle Vanya.”
I can’t help but mention the fact that Chekhov felt that Stanislavski overdid the off-stage sounds for his plays. There were times when Chekhov complained to friends that Stanislavski turned the quiet third act of his play “The Three Sisters” into a “terrible commotion.” The script called for a “distant fire brigade to drive by” and the actual sound effect stopped the dialogue onstage.
With the use of 21st century technology, I will be able to mix recorded sounds that will evoke the country life outside of the estate. The approaching storm outside during act two, will be mixed with faint Russian traditional music to heighten the pathos of the scene. As the play progresses, I will mix in distant trains and factory whistles to represent the approaching industrialization that will overtake the unsuspecting family.
All of this will be subliminal, serving only as a texturing of the environment in support of the dramatic action. This is the filmmaking technique of creating a sound bed. I learned this technique in my experiences as a film editor and will employ it as an added dimension in our staging of “Uncle Vanya.”
My Friend, Anton
Part Eleven
When I direct a play, I take it through three phases. The process begins with conceptualization. This is when the play begins to form itself in my head. As I read the play, I imagine a series of actions and behaviors by characters living in a world that is very much like ours. Various concepts arise from my observations of their interactions. A concept for the play begins to take shape.
From this conceptualization, an arc of action arises. This arc becomes the framework for mimesis. Mimesis is a term that means “imitation of action.” The framework itself is sustained action that brings characters together and generates conflict between them. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the main dramatic conflict I will stress in “Uncle Vanya” is the conflict between idealism and reality.
Each scene depicts characters who are in pursuit of an ideal. The petty conflicts that occur between them are not the result of other characters preventing the pursuit of this ideal, but because the characters themselves lack the strength or courage to sustain their pursuit. Their squabbles are comical because they are misdirected and meaningless. However, there is an undertow of pathos when one realizes that each character is the cause of their own downfall.
The conceptualization process eventually segues into the previsualization process. This involves making specific design choices for the performance space that will put the abstract concept of the play into concrete artistic form. The shadows of the imagination must be put into a stageworthy representation.
Theatre is an art that occurs in a specific time and space. Before the rehearsal process begins, I will need to visualize the characters in my head as actors on the stage. I will previsualize a specific vision of the location in which the character will engage in mimesis. I will also previsualize the specifics of their appearances. What are these characters wearing and how do the color, line, shape, texture and ornament of what they are wearing reveal the soul of the character? How do these elements of design define the relationships between the characters? I will work with the costume designer on these details.
How much space do I have in which to work? A director needs to be aware of such aspects of stage space as the typical dimensions of a chair, the height and width of a standard doorway, and the amount of room needed between set pieces to accommodate specific blocking patterns. From this knowledge, the director will be able to determine possible stage compositions, given the floor plan of the set. To be effective at previsualization, it’s good for a director to know how a scale rule works.
Once you can precisely envision the time and space for your production, you are able to design stage worthy blocking and business. If you have a solid handle on the concept of your play and have specific knowledge of the time and space needed to create stage worthy sustained action, your blocking choices will be one of the most potent means of communicating with your actors. An actor will be able to ascertain their role in a scene when you block them in a specific location. They will become aware of the significance of their actions and define meaningful transitions when you give them a precise cue on which to move.
Once you have cultivated a rich concept and have arrived at a solid previsualization of your production, you are prepared to engage in the rehearsal process. Effective conceptualization and precise previsualization will prepare you to create freely.
My Friend, Anton
Part Twelve
I’m both a playwright and a director. The two skills are transferable. Playwrighting is the process of creating a through-line-of-action in which each scene serves as a building block. When writing a play, I begin with a scenario that outlines the actions of each scene and how the scenes progress. From these narratives, I fashion scenes of dialogue and action with a view to the characters. When I’m writing the dialogue for the scenes, if I’ve imagined strong enough characters, they often depart from my scenario and take the action into surprising new directions. I always feel that it’s necessary for the characters to take over the writing of the play at some point.
Playwrighting is essentially creating building blocks and then building them into a finished product. Directing reverses this process. As a director, I begin with a finished product and take it apart, dividing the play into French scenes. French scenes occur anytime a character enters onto or exits from the scene. They help to identify significant transitions in the action of a play.
A director needs to be aware of transitions. When the action moves from one direction to another it needs to be reinforced by stage blocking or stage business. Like the characters in the play, the actors themselves will bring their own notions of their characters. This can also take the play into unexpected new depths that the director must be prepared to explore. A director needs to know when to turn the characters of the play over to the actors.
In taking “Uncle Vanya” apart, I begin with the main conflict of the play and apply it to the action thematically. Once I have done this, I will apply the pragmatic craft of staging to the abstract theme. As previously stated, the main conflict in “Uncle Vanya” is the struggle between idealism and reality. The characters in Chekhov’s play represent this conflict both thematically and in their observable actions.
The character Helena has already achieved her ideal by marrying a man of celebrity. Alexander Serebrakoff is a professor of art who has become a darling of the region. He is, however, now advanced in age and suffers from the indignities of his advanced years. It has now fallen to the ill-equipped beauty, Helena, to care for her husband.
Helena also serves the thematic purpose of representing idealism itself. She is a beautiful young woman with whom all men are enamored. She also represents the ideal for the women in the play. In their envy they wish that they could receive similar validation as Helena. However, the lovely Helena is also shallow. All the characters in the play seem to acknowledge this defect but can’t help but fall “bewitched” by her physical beauty.
On the other end of the spectrum, the maid Marina represents reality. From her position as an outsider, she can see the flaws of the other characters and seems to have a prescient sense of the outcome of the play. Her version of idealism is that the domestic activities of the house run efficiently. She is blunt and honest. These qualities are variously resented and appreciated by the other characters in the play.
Between these two characters, the audience witnesses all the other characters struggling with the passions of their idealism and the inexorable and indifferent grip of reality. We’ll look at the thematic sketches of these characters in the next post.
My Friend, Anton
Part Thirteen
A doctor often serves as a character in Chekhov’s plays and short stories. One would assume that they represent the outlook of the author. If this is the case, Anton doesn’t let himself off the hook.
In “Uncle Vanya,” Astrov is a country doctor who has been practicing in the region for several years. In the opening scene, this character bemoans the jaded attitude he has toward his patients. He fears that his vocation has left him weary and dissipated. The maid, Marina, bluntly and comically confirms the doctor’s worst fears. Considering himself to be a pragmatic man, he can’t help but revere her honesty.
Astrov is a character who was in the original version of the play, then entitled, “The Wood Demon.” He was the title character in the earlier evolution of Chekhov’s story as Mikhail Khrushchov, a landowner with a degree in medicine but an active conservationist. As a landowner, Khrushchov dedicated his time trying to save the depleting forestry in the region, thus receiving the nickname, “The Wood Demon.”
My friend Anton dedicated much of his time, attention and financial resources to assisting hospitals, schools and other public services in his community. One doesn’t get the sense that Chekhov presses his own point of view in his work but there is little doubt, judging from surviving correspondence, that he was deeply concerned about the damage that the growing industrial revolution was doing to the natural resources of his motherland. Herein lies the idealism of Astrov’s character.
Uncle Vanya’s long time doctor friend spends every free moment he has assisting the bureaucrat who oversees the forestry in the area. Sonia declares that the doctor does “most of the work.” In his zeal, Astrov develops maps of the region to keep track of the development of his work. These maps become central to development of the theme of the play.
Astrov’s main conflict is internal. He often lets his passion for conservation get the best of him. This is followed by an apologetic demeanor for allowing himself to get carried away. The country doctor views himself as a realist. He often impulsively presses his view of conservation but restrains himself at the first sign of pushback from a more pragmatic point of view. This admirable man is embarrassed by his virtue.
Astrov keeps his attraction to Helena to himself. He even uses her as an example of “false beauty” when speaking with Sonia. But, fearing that time is passing him by, he gives into his more cynical, libidinous nature. Eventually, he impulsively engages in a crude attempt to seduce Helena, making him no better than any of the other men.
As an outsider from the family, Astrov was able to hold himself above their pettiness. Conceding to the reality of his baser instincts, he embraces his downfall.
My Friend, Anton
Part Fourteen
The title character of “Uncle Vanya” is in the throes of the inner conflict between idealism and reality. Vanya’s struggle, however, consistently and impulsively bubbles to the surface. It can’t help but manifest itself in comically embarrassing behavior. Behavior that resolves itself in tragic humility.
Vanya was the character Yegor in “The Wood Demon.” He was of less import than Vanya but had several scenes similar to those in “Uncle Vanya.” The biggest difference between the characters is that Yegor melodramatically commits suicide as a result of his suffering while Vanya engages in a comically inept attempt to shoot his enemy. The difference in these actions elevate “Uncle Vanya” from melodrama to tragicomedy.
Vanya is that “Russian” gentleman, of whom Chekhov often spoke, who spends his time regretting the loss of his golden past. He continually obsesses about missed opportunities. “I could have been as great as Dostoevsky or Schopenhauer,” Vanya proclaims at one point in the play.
While Astrov conceals his attraction to Helena, Vanya makes a miserably open show of his infatuation by begging her to show him just a little favor. Despite her continual rejection of his advances, he continues to make a contemptible fool of himself over her. He confesses to Astrov that he is in her spell. When he speaks despairingly about Helena’s husband, Astrov accuses him of being jealous. Rather than denying it, Vanya humorously confesses to being jealous and embraces his pettiness.
Vanya’s obsessive pursuit of Helena, the play’s symbol of idealism, is hopeless. However, Vanya still can’t help but imagine that there was a chance, before she married the professor, when he could have captured Helena’s heart and the two could now be living together in idyllic bliss. Vanya lives in a delusory past, present and future. Like the Russian bourgeois of the period, he closes his eyes to what the future will bring and plunges ahead in ignorant bliss.
Where Yegor in “The Wood Demon” found escape in suicide, Vanya lacks the courage or skill to escape. Without his delusions, he is relegated to the meanness of everyday existence. He isn’t even afforded the dignity which his niece, Sonya, manages to keep intact during the tragic final moments of the play.
However, the genius my friend Anton wields in this play is that Vanya is so small in stature that his fate doesn’t even rise to the level of tragedy. Making the pathos of this tragicomedy even more profound.
My Friend, Anton
Part Fifteen
If there is a hero in Chekhov’s tragicomedy it’s Vanya’s niece, Sonya. Sonya struggles with the battle between idealism and reality just like the other characters in the play but she does so with genuine humanity. Sonya believes that she has found the perfect partner in Doctor Astrov. She finds him handsome, but she also recognizes his benevolent soul with a keenness that escapes even the doctor himself.
Where Astrov doubts himself, Sonia embraces the beauty of his vision. The love Sonia bears for the doctor is pure and selfless. She envisions herself working by his side to aid him in pursuing his dream of restoring nature. Unfortunately, Sonya lives with the delusion that, because she knows Astrov so completely, their pairing must be inevitable. Of course, it’s not.
Sonya has an exceedingly beautiful soul. Her curse is that she is physically plain. She harbors no delusion about her appearance. Sonya confides in Helena that she is aware of her plainness and relates that she heard someone at church describe her as homely. To which, Helena tells her not to pay attention to what people say at church because, “they’re at their worst there.”
In scene one, Astrov attempts to explain to Helena the importance of conservation. When the doctor provides a self-effacing explanation, Sonya interjects herself into the conversation and provides a far more noble and exhilarating portrait of Astrov’s efforts. In her effusive declaration, she resembles her uncle in her inability to restrain her passion. However, Sonia’s effervescence is in the service of what she believes is the pure vision of the doctor’s idealism.
Sonia lives in hope, but she is reticent to pursue the doctor directly for fear that she will be rejected and her ideal future will be lost forever. When Helena offers to broach the subject of Sonia’s chances with Astrov, the poor girl insists that she doesn’t want the doctor to think that she put Helena up to it. Helena assures Sonya that, in fact, she didn’t put her up to it but that it’s an answer that the young beauty herself is curious to know. Unfortunately, Sonya has unwittingly planted seeds in Helena’s mind and hands her delicate task over to her ham-handed envoy.
The scene between Helena and Astrov has a life-changing effect not only on Sonya but on Vanya, Helena and Astrov as well. The aftermath of their meeting provides some of the most cringingly ironic comedy in all of Chekhov.
Sonya’s final scene with her Uncle Vanya is heart-breaking. Both characters have lost their dreams and have relegated themselves to a life of tedious servitude. However, where Vanya dissolves into a pool of self-pity Sonya tries to elevate their future with a final hopeful vision. In her conviction, this genuine idealist bravely tries to convince Vanya, as well as herself, of a beautiful final curtain whose reality she can no longer help but doubt.
My Friend, Anton
Part Sixteen
“Well, when you got here you were good looking. . . and young, of course. And you drink more now than you did when you first got here.” This is the response that the doctor gets from Marina, the family maid, when he wistfully asks her if he’s changed. Ask Marina a question and she can only give you an honest answer.
Marina is the anchor of reality in the world of “Uncle Vanya.” She is simple and direct. Her bluntness is never a value judgement but a genuine expression of her understanding of the “here and now.” Where the other characters live in the past or look forward to an ideal future, Marina is at home in the reality of the present. She knows her place and is quite comfortable there.
Marina serves tea to the family members dutifully. However, when her employer asks her to see what the men at the gate want, Marina sighs with open frustration and makes her exit. When tension rises among the family members, this placid servant understands that “all is vanity” and simply goes about her tasks.
She never insinuates herself into the affairs of the family, but when she is brought into the conversation she doesn’t bother with euphemisms. When Vanya declares haughtily in her presence, “When I’m summoned, I arrive promptly!” Marina’s response is, “Ha!” and she leaves the room.
Marina represents the patient, enduring servant class of Russia of that period. At the end of the 19th century, serfdom was ended in Russia. With this came a new enlightenment that created an awkward sense of class guilt among the landed gentry. The privileged class felt obligated to redefine their relationship with their servants. They were sympathetic to their servant’s resentment toward them and bore their animus with muted obligation. The way that the other characters placate Marina plays out comically in “Uncle Vanya.”
Since family members of the landed gentry spend their time jockeying for position, the servants often serve as parental figures. This maternal instinct is particularly evident with Marina’s attitude toward Sonya and Professor Serebrakoff.
In the first scene of the play, Marina joins in with Vanya’s complaints about how the Professor’s presence has thrown the domestic schedule into disarray. However, when the professor complains about his health, Marina plays the nurse and coos in his ear assuring him that “nobody understands him.”
When Sonya is devastated in scene three, Marina takes her in her arms and intones, “The geese have cackled, and some eggs have been cracked but all will be well.” In Marina’s world, a little linden tea and a warm blanket will cure any crisis.
My Friend, Anton
Part Seventeen
Madame Voynitskaya, Vanya’s mother, never loses her idealism. She, like her son, hitched her wagon to Professor Serebrakov’s star. Vanya, however, has come to see the professor as a fraud. Vanya has lost his idealistic investment in his deceased sister’s former husband. Madame clings to his genius.
The professor had married Vanya’s sister. Vanya idolized his sister, having married the great art critic. Vanya’s mother had put herself in the professor’s service, reading the works of other authors and informing him of the latest trends in academic thought. She spends day and night making notes in hopes that she will be of service to her son-in-law. Like her granddaughter, Sonia, her idealism is selfless. However, there is something foolish in her servitude to a man who doesn’t seem to know that she is alive.
During the conflict between Madame and Vanya in scene 1, when the family matriarch expresses amazement in the latest development in art criticism by one of the professor’s colleagues, which she finds appalling, Vanya responds, “There’s nothing appalling about it, Mother. Like all ‘so called’ learned men, Alexevich is just starved for attention. Sit down and drink your tea.” Madame takes exception with Vanya’s disrespectful tone and asks, “What’s happened to you, Vanya? This past year? What happened to the son who used to be a man of such high ideals? Where did your curiosity go? Your inquisitive mind? You used to illuminate everywhere you went with your invigorating convictions!”
As the argument continues, Vanya stops just short of revealing his contempt for the professor. He uses sarcasm to veil his open resentment, when he retorts, “Good things come to those who put in the effort to earn them. Look at your noble professor.” When Madame agrees with Vanya, he finally states openly, “Ha! You can’t even tell when I’m speaking ironically anymore.” Madame continues the argument as if she doesn’t take his point.
Madame Voynitskaya is a blind idealist. It’s as if she’s invested so much in her son-in-law that she doesn’t allow herself to see that he is losing his health and is giving up on his work. Being on the extreme end of our conflict of idealism vs. reality, she becomes the embodiment of the limitations of idealism.
There was a character in Uncle Vanya that was cut from my adaptation of the play. Telegin is a character who was almost taken directly from Chekhov’s earlier play, “The Wood Demon.” He played a bigger role in the first rendition of the play. In “Uncle Vanya,” he brought his foolish optimism along with him, but it plays a smaller role. Telegin is a local landowner and hanger-on. “Waffles,” as he is called because of his pock marked face, provided an outsiders view of the family troubles. His primary purpose in the play is to play guitar to help set the mood. While he does provide a more extreme, largely foolish view of idealism with this brand of optimism, Madame fills this role sufficiently and his absence allows a more streamlined view of the action of the play.
My Friend, Anton
Part Eighteen
Alexander Serebrakoff is a retired professor of art. His biggest problem, to use the old cliché, is that he “believes his own press releases.” When a practicing professor, his reputation rose to the level of celebrity. However, he never creates art. His skill was his ability to comment on it.
Through exposition in the play, the audience learns that Vanya’s family’s reputation was elevated when his sister married the professor. With the famous Alexander Serebrakoff as an in-law, the family threw all its strength behind his work. Sadly, Vanya’s sister died, and the professor went on to marry the object of Vanya’s obsession, Helena. Naturally, this created a growing resentment in Vanya which became unbearable to him with each passing day.
At this time in Russia, there was a growing anti-aesthetic movement in the changing power structure. Traditional art, and the point of view on which the professor built his career, was considered outdated and decadent. The culture would eventually install what was referred to as Socialist Realism, as the official art aesthetic of the Soviet Union. It would be expected that all art would be a direct reflection of the idealism of Socialism. In view of this, Alexander Serebrakoff was headed toward obsolescence.
This is confirmed in the play by his failing health. Where the family originally invested all of their efforts in the professor’s stirring work, they now tend to his many physical complaints. Where the professor’s marriage to the beautiful young Helena was once looked on as the perfect match, it is now seen as tawdry. The professor, however, hangs on to his sense of importance even though, as Vanya puts it, “He hasn’t written anything significant for years.”
The professor, in his frustration, hates Doctor Astrov. Astrov, for his part, is more philosophical in his contempt for the professor. “Do you think he’s a hypochondriac?” he asks Vanya. To which Vanya responds, “Does it matter? The result’s the same.” The doctor concedes, “True. I’ve come to the conclusion that all illness is in the mind. It’s simply a matter of degree.” This exchange points up the fact that the downfall of the characters in “Uncle Vanya” is a result of their own faulty perceptions of reality.
While the professor is dismissive and cranky, he is simply playing the role in which the family had cast him. He is now entrenched in his role as the family patriarch despite his growing feebleness. His situation rises to the level of pathos when he tries to regain the respect of the family by gathering them to deliver a professorial lecture that he believes will solve all their problems. He addresses the family with the certainty that they will embrace his self-centered plan for the good of the family. The result, of course, is devastatingly farcical and leads to the hard truths that end the action of the play.
The tension between Astrov and Serebrakoff leads to a subconscious rivalry for Helena’s favors. I’ll look more deeply into this in the next post.
My Friend, Anton
Part Nineteen
Like her husband, Helena has been cast in a role for which she did not audition. She is the personification of idealism in “Uncle Vanya.” All the men desire this unapproachable beauty. All the women envy her. Helena does her best to ignore the unwanted attention but is tormented by the constant advances of Vanya and the distrusting eyes of Sonya. Even her admirers refer to her as a “pixie” and “bewitching.” There seems to be no admiration for her as a human being.
Doctor Astrov, in his attempt to rationalize the unapproachable nature her self-preservation evokes, complains to Sonya in the second scene, “She is beautiful but only on the surface. It should be a rule that physical beauty can only be allowed when inner beauty is alive.” He refers to her as “indolent” and “empty.” But in the following scene he will be pursuing her.
Helena is quite aware of the negative connotations that accompanies her physical attractiveness. The doctor brings his maps to discuss his views on conservation with her in scene three. She is quick to point out that she was educated at the conservatory in St. Petersburg. When he seems skeptical about her interest in conservation she assures him, “I read.”
In her attempt to forge a friendship with Sonya, Serebrakoff’s daughter, Helena insists that she married the professor not for prestige but for love. Helena tells Sonya that their situations should make them allies rather than enemies. The soft-hearted Sonya gives in and accepts Helena as her “comrade.” This bond will have disastrous consequences before the curtain falls.
Sonya confides the depths of her feelings for Astrov. In Helena’s attempt to deepen their newfound intimacy, she agrees with Sonya’s passionate portrayal of Astrov and even goes so far as to add other of the doctor’s honorable assets and, in the process, awakens her own feelings of attraction for Astrov.
Helena enlists herself as Sonya’s emissary with the doctor. Her efforts, however, are sullied by her own self-interest. Her words on Sonya’s behalf are half-hearted and fall short of their purpose. Helena has gotten herself into uncharted territory when the doctor senses her own interests and pursues her coarsely. Helena’s regards his sudden candid proclamations of passion as both appalling and tantalizing. Her comically awkward reciprocation of his attentions is underscored when Vanya enters with an armful of roses that he has brought to her as a token of his own affection. From this point on, the tension between Vanya, Astrov, Helena and Sonya is pathetically palpable to the point of absurdity.
Helena is like the little toy puppet who wishes to become a real person. Unfortunately, it is her very real human frailty that prevents the transformation from occurring.
My Friend, Anton
Part Twenty
Putting together a production score for a play involves a paper design that translates interpretations into a previsualized production. Rather than shadowy images that flash through their mind, a director needs to prepare the script for the art and craft of the stage. Once they know their space, the director begins to create a production design that puts the play into stageworthy terms.
Stage compositions, stage business and stage blocking cue the audience to important transitions of action, relationships between characters and the overall mood of a scene. With this in mind, the director now sits down with the production script and a pencil and scores the production from beginning to end. It’s a score that promotes a solid artistic vision but leaves room for spontaneous creation by all members of the company.
The beginning of a play doesn’t occur when the curtain rises. It begins when the audience members enter the lobby. This is where the theatre creates a “sense of occasion” for the play. A director has an important role in creating this pre-production atmosphere.
Often, the stage setting is visible to the audience as they enter. There is a carefully crafted pre-show setting for the lighting of the arrangement of the stage and the mood of the house. The preshow settings for the light should play with light and shadow to introduce the threshold of the dream that the illusion of the play will create. “Uncle Vanya’s” fragmented setting with detailed period props will begin the process of transporting the audience to late 19th century Russia. Hopefully, the abstract nature of the set will prepare the audience for the interior journey they are about to take.
This theatre spell will also be cast by the preshow music, which will begin just before the house opens. I have put together 30 minutes of haunting, traditional Russian music that will serve as the soundtrack for the audience’s trip from their 21st century existence to a foreign land where the people, nonetheless, share the same kinds of struggles, joys, and heartaches as we do today.
The house lights lower to half to alert the audience that the play is about to begin. It’s our goal that, when the lights illuminate the action, the audience will be right there with us.
The preshow music segues into the sounds of the Russian countryside just out of the front door of the house. There is an old peasant woman sitting at the table. The sound of her wooden knitting needles can be heard clacking together as she works, quietly underscoring the poetically tedious domesticity of her life.
Soon, a man enters through the front door unannounced and crosses to center stage. He holds a portfolio under his arm and a doctor’s bag in his hand. There he remains in deep meditation. He is so rapt within his interior world that he seems to be unaware that he has arrived at his destination. The old woman continues knitting. This tableau introduces the audience to my friend Anton’s play.