By Anton Chekhov - Center Stage

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“Any idiot can face a crisis — it’s day-to-day living that wears you out.” It was an era of contradictions, juxtapositions, and astonishing transformation. Writing with Light It is noteworthy that, throughout The Three Sisters, Lieutenant Fedotik is rarely without his camera. by Gavin Witt, Production Dramaturg The shutterbug snapping candids has become a thoroughly modern figure, yet it is one with a long provenance. When Chekhov conceived and wrote his play, in those years around 1900, photography as a pastime and amateur enjoyment had exploded. Photography moved in a mere lifetime from the arcane specialty of scientists and professionals to the inescapable clutches of the hobbyists. Technical advances, cheap access, and successful marketing made cameras Next Stage: The Three Sisters | 5
“Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.” >>> Chekhov’s lifetime witnessed Russia’s emergence from a benighted past towards some measure of modernity. Scientific, cultural, medical, philosophical, literary, musical, technological progress all battled with stagnation—a deeply conservative resistance to change of any kind. Railways crisscrossed the interior, but industrial progress was slow to follow. In addition to emancipation, there were other gestures of political reform. But for every step toward moderation and inclusion, harsh repression would follow—and by 1900 Marx was not the only one insisting that a specter haunted the monarchies of Europe. Idealistic calls for a better world, led by the noblesse oblige of Tolstoy and his circle, merely decorated the surface of a boiling cauldron of resentment, steeped in poverty and seething with the threat of imminent revolution—which bubbled over in violence only a year after Chekhov’s death. >>> popular with middle class families from America to Russia, where everyone from provincial families to the Grand Duchess Anastasia quickly became inseparable from a Kodak Brownie. Today’s incessant snapping of camera phones is the logical descendant of the process Chekhov wryly records in his play. And so, to document the many juxtapositions and wide gulfs of life in Chekhov’s Russia, we have an abundance of photographs— amateur and professional alike. The word photography itself—a combination of Greek words meaning to write with light —appeared around 1839. Written in light. Inscribed with lightning. An apt name—and an apt image for Chekhov’s delicate, mournful comedy: momentary, revealing, potentially shattering, and just as ephemeral. ● Next Stage: The Three Sisters | 6
Page 1 and 2: Nex t Stage Resource Guide Reparati
Page 3 and 4: Set ting the Stage The Three Sister
Page 5: Chekhov 1860-1904 By Gavin Witt, Pr
Page 9 and 10: “We go to great pains to alter li
Page 11 and 12: “Medicine is my lawful wife and l
Page 13 and 14: “They say that in the end truth w
Page 15 and 16: Glossary Compiled by Gavin Witt, Pr
Page 17 and 18: Glossary Continued >>> Duels were a
Page 19: Annotated Bibliogr aphy Compiled by

By Anton Chekhov - Center Stage

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