Chekhov on Theatre

A unique collection of everything that Chekhov wrote about the theatre.

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 for this volume, these writings reveal Chekhov's instinctive curiosity about the way theatre works – and his concerns about how best to realise 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.

'Chekhov is an acute observer who could easily have made his way as a director or dramaturg judging by his ability to spot strengths and weaknesses in not only his own writing but that of others. This book builds a strong picture of theatrical life in Moscow and St Petersburg just before and at the turn of the last century, with vast amounts of bitching seemingly a commonplace. It can also serve as a tangential autobiography since, through its pages, it is possible to learn much about its subject's life and work.' - British Theatre Guide

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Chekhov on Theatre

A unique collection of everything that Chekhov wrote about the theatre.

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 for this volume, these writings reveal Chekhov's instinctive curiosity about the way theatre works – and his concerns about how best to realise 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.

'Chekhov is an acute observer who could easily have made his way as a director or dramaturg judging by his ability to spot strengths and weaknesses in not only his own writing but that of others. This book builds a strong picture of theatrical life in Moscow and St Petersburg just before and at the turn of the last century, with vast amounts of bitching seemingly a commonplace. It can also serve as a tangential autobiography since, through its pages, it is possible to learn much about its subject's life and work.' - British Theatre Guide

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Overview

A unique collection of everything that Chekhov wrote about the theatre.

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 for this volume, these writings reveal Chekhov's instinctive curiosity about the way theatre works – and his concerns about how best to realise 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.

'Chekhov is an acute observer who could easily have made his way as a director or dramaturg judging by his ability to spot strengths and weaknesses in not only his own writing but that of others. This book builds a strong picture of theatrical life in Moscow and St Petersburg just before and at the turn of the last century, with vast amounts of bitching seemingly a commonplace. It can also serve as a tangential autobiography since, through its pages, it is possible to learn much about its subject's life and work.' - British Theatre Guide


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781788500104
Publisher: Hern, Nick Books
Publication date: 04/13/2018
Sold by: Bookwire
Format: eBook
Pages: 256
File size: 936 KB

About the Author

About The Author
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), a physician by training, is now considered the most notable 20th-century Russian dramatist. His major plays, all staged by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre, helped establish psychological realism in European theatre.
Stephen Mulrine is a Glasgow-born poet and playwright who has written extensively for radio and television, and published many translations.
Peter Urban (16 July 1941 in Berlin – 9 December 2013) was a German writer and translator. He became famous for his translations of Russian authors, including Isaak Babel, Anton Chekhov, Daniel Charms, Leonid Dobychin, Ivan Goncharov, Nikolai Gogol, Alexander Pushkin, and Ivan Turgenev. He also translated from Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene and Czech. He was granted several important translation prizes, such as the Übersetzerpreis der Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, the Preis der Stadt Münster für Europäische Poesie, the Johann-Heinrich-Voß-Preis für Übersetzung and the Helmut-M.-Braem-Übersetzerpreis.

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

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