Evolution

So today I have spent many hours transcribing Chekhov's 'Three Sisters' so that I can start working on my new adaptation.  This is alway the very painful bit, but it is also an essential part of the process.  By retyping the play, you get to look in minute detail at the structure and characters.  In many ways, this play is not what I thought it was from the versions I have seen staged.  The characters are magnificent and it is going to be so hard to bring it down to around 8 which would make it stageable in this day and age.  Large casts are so much more exciting, but who has the money to do that anymore?  Even 8 is extreme.  The largest you generally see these days is around 6.  The problem is, small cast work is so shallow.  It does not convey the complexities of human interaction.  You lose the shades of grey inevitable in life.  You get the story, but not other characters impact on it or how they are affected by it.

I am enjoying the fact that I am finding new things in this work.  Some characters are already so bright and full.  With Othello, I had already tried to reduce the cast by the time I typed it out.  This time I am being faithful to the original to begin.  I do have my concept, which I am using as a base, and I have found poetry to work in, but I want to take the full journey with the original characters.  I can't help feeling that some of the characters that don't blossom in Act 1 will become the main protagonists of my adaptation.  Natasha is an obvious one, but some of the men are mysterious and intriguing, and I may do the unthinkable and lose a sister in favour of someone else.  We won't know until I get there and I understand what is happening.  The journey is unfolding for me as if it were a completely new idea.  I am loving it!