Chekhov on Theatre

by Anton Chekhov, Stephen Mulrine (Editor), Jutta Hercher (Editor), Peter Urban (Editor)

Overview

(Book). Chekhov started writing about theatre in newspaper articles and in his own letters even before he began writing plays. Later, he wrote in detail about his own plays to his lifelong friend and mentor Alexei Suvorin; his wife and leading actress, Olga Knipper; and to the two directors of the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. Collected here in Stephen Mulrine's vivid translations, these writings reveal Chekhov's instinctive curiosity about the way theatre works and his concerns about how best to realize his own intentions as a playwright. Often peppery, passionate, even distraught, as he feels his plays misinterpreted or undermined, Chekhov comes over in these pages as a true man of the theatre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623160296
Publisher:	Opus Books
Publication date:	04/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian author of plays and short stories. Although Chekhov became a physician and once considered medicine his primary career, he gained fame and esteem through writing, ultimately producing a number of well-known plays, including The Seagull and Uncle Vanya, and a large body of innovative short stories that influenced the evolution of the form.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

1 Moscow Theatre, 1881-1885 1

Sarah Bernhardt 1

Sarah Bernhardt Again 6

Hamlet at the Pushkin Theatre 12

The Baron 15

Geneviève de Brabant 22

Fragments of Moscow Theatre Life 24

2 On Writing, 1883-1904 47

Authors 49

Writing 57

Theatre, Society and the Public 68

Criticism 82

Writing for the Theatre 89

Actors 96

Acting 110

Chekhov as Critic 113

3 Chekhov's Plays, 1887-1904 139

Ivanov I 141

Ivanov II 150

One-Act Plays 165

The Wood Demon 169

Uncle Vanya 178

The Seagull I 180

The Seagull II 189

Three Sisters 191

The Cherry Orchard 199

Appendices

The Genesis of Chekhov's Plays 221

The Moscow Art Theatre 1898-1904 226

Chekhov on the Russian Stage 1887-1917 228

Chekhov's Principal Correspondents 238

Index 241