Portrait of Constantin Stanislavski as Trigorin, and Maria Roksanova, in the Moscow Art Theatre’s production of The Seagull
Although Anton Chekhov had been writing for many years, originally attaching his literary identity to short stories and short comedic plays, his literary maturity and reputation arose from his works in drama relatively late in his career. Although his first major play, The Wood Demon, was a failure, Chekhov nevertheless continued writing, eventually creating work critics would call beautiful art (Krik, 133). Nonetheless, his ascent to the forefront of Russian drama during the 19th century arrived largely in part to the release of The Seagull in 1896. Influenced and inspired by his time living in the pastoral, countryside of Melikhovo, Chekhov wrote the mature drama inspired by two new and modern artistic movements: naturalism and realism. While living in Melikhovo, Chekhov was surrounded by natural landscape that inspired the strong presence of organic life in his set design (Krik, 134). Additionally, through the perspective of realism, Chekhov sought to present a faithful representation of real life and all of its social problems. At the time period, audiences were accustomed to seeing exaggerated declamation and action through farce and melodrama, but with The Seagull, Chekhov hoped to change the way audiences looked at his art and understood theater. The play deals with the complex connectivity between art, love, life, and psychology and the playwright uses these two artistic movements or philosophies as mechanisms through which he can portray the issues concerning his characters in a lifelike manner. Although the first performance of the play was a scandalous failure, receiving major mockery from the audience in St. Petersburg, the revived production of The Seagull at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 was a rave success. The Seagull’’s usage of mood, subtext, and symbolism, concepts foreign in comparison with past conventions of theatre, were difficult for audiences to understand at first glance (Krik, 133). Once adapted to the stage by the founders of Moscow Art Theater however, people who understood Chekhov’s experimental thought process, audience members were prepared to appreciate art rather than another over-the-top presentation. With The Seagull, Chekhov depicts certain unspoken problems of society through accurate realism of human life and carefully placed symbols of nature, a thematic methodology he would return to in his following plays.
Uncle Vanya at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899
After both The Wood Demon and The Seagull (at the time) had failed to be acclaimed by public audiences, Chekhov reworked the former play into Uncle Vanya, a play whose conception he refrained from sharing with others. The play was first presented in the anthology of plays and then moved to provincial theater where it was quickly met with success. Opening in the Moscow Art Theater in 1899, Uncle Vanya was a mature play full of emotion and originality, starkly different from the convention comedy of its first form (Kirk, 138). Once again, Chekhov sought to reimagine conventions of Russian theatre and this play, with its multi-dimensional layering between tragedy and comedy, portrayed the complexity of human experience accurately (Hingley, 224).
The front cover of the first edition of Three Sisters published 1901 by Adolf Marks, St Petersburg
Following the success of Uncle Vanya, Chekhov was pressured to write another play and out of his laboring, arose Three Sisters in 1900. Focusing his creative energy on this single entity, Chekhov once again challenged the theatrical norms in Three Sisters by evenly weighing its dramatic structure in order to illustrate the effects of passing time, rather than the traditional method of having the climax in middle of a three or five act play (Kirk, 149). Over the course of the four acts of the play, Chekhov uses disjointed conversation and interaction between his characters in order to heighten the subtext in the show. In Chekhov’s mind, only the Moscow Art Theater could portray the images of verbal and non-verbal aspects to denote the progression of time in an effective and accurate manner (Rayfield, 515). Rooted in elements of realism, Three Sisters illustrates the significance of human life and their frustrations in life that leave audiences with beautiful and authentic images. Once again, following the success of his previous play, Chekhov sought to create another play that would be a joyful comedy. First produced in 1904, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard was the most comedic of his later, more mature plays. Once again, Chekhov’s characters behave ordinarily or realistically in order to imitate the actions of everyday life while illustrating the intricacies of human experience (Gainor, 821). However, the production received a disapproving response from audiences who searched for significance in dramatic action rather than focusing on the subtextual drama in the play (Kirk, 151). Nevertheless, throughout Chekhov’s time as a playwright, his innovations on 19th century Russian theatre allowed life on stage to mimic life how really is and how the people behave as well, not over-dramatize and heighten how human action. WIth his plays, Chekhov redefined theatrical realism through drama rooted in subtext and psychological overtone in order to offer a more accurate vision of the intersection between theater and real life.
Scene from The Cherry Orchard, Moscow Art Theater, 1904.