Fading Flowers

Today I had the opportunity to participate in a play reading of Chekov's 'Three Sisters'.  Apart from the fact that is a great play with wonderful female roles, it was just so nice to be involved in a process that has no performance outcome requirements.  We only read the first two acts and then just had a discussion about themes, imagery, and performative challenges.  It was soooo rewarding.  I think that is one of the problems with working in professional arts.  There is ALWAYS a performance outcome.

So what did we discover today - apart from the obvious impossibility of Russian names and familiars of course!  One of the more interesting observations was that there is generally a lot of background noise and movement prescribed in the script.  People are always coming and going, or whistling, or dancing.  It is such a busy and noisy world, how do you pull focus where you want to, and what exactly ARE all the characters doing in the long breaks of dialogue when they are still on stage?

The question of visuals and imagery was also discussed.  I brought up the interesting comment about all the flowers that are around, and did that also refer to the sisters?  Are they fading blooms, that need the sunlight of Moscow to revive, otherwise they will die.  Would this be aided with a dying or overgrown garden being part of the world?  It was agreed that it was a large, grandiose world, but a cold one as well.

We talked about how the dialogue continually shifts between the personal and the public, and it is like a dance scene where maybe the conversations are all happening all the time, but suddenly one couple comes to the forefront and you suddenly hear a bit of their conversation before they move on, and others move into the frame.  This is interesting, too, with odd sense of people always entering and leaving the scene.  One of the funnier analogies included a reference to the Star Trek transporters, with people beaming in and out.

It was generally agreed (and supported by the text), that time and place don't really matter.  As is mentioned in the text, if you go into the future, the jackets will have changed, but that is about all.  That is the genius of Chekov.  He studies the human condition, not humans as individuals existing in space and time.  Which is not to say he does not give them a space and time - more that it is not integral to understanding what is happening.

Ciao!