These characters’ language is colloquial and provisional-they speak in fragments and double back on themselves. Plays that talk briefly about big things.Ī compulsive observer of human behavior, Chekhov was obsessed with creating characters and situations that were fiercely realistic, experiencing their lives without crests and plunges, where emotional action and inner turmoil reign supreme. Instead of organizing his plays around tightly linked external or physical events, Chekhov aimed to create a detailed, particular, and familiar picture of action playing out on a life-sized scale-representative moments spread over time that chart the journeys from optimism to understanding that many of his characters inevitably make. His plays disrupt the basic dramaturgical habits of causality: nothing in Three Sisters’ Act One causes anything in Act Two to happen, and the same holds for Acts Three and Four. “I know how to talk briefly about big things.” Chekhov’s plays defiantly lack classical plot structure there is no Aristotelian arc, no satisfying denouement. “The art of writing is the art of contracting,” Chekhov wrote. Chekhov’s plays have no precedent in the theatrical canon, intent as they are on redefining what can be called “dramatic.” Cursory interpretations of his work often lead to blanket statements such as: “His plays create mood,” or “They depict the lifestyle of Russia’s bored provincial elites,” or “Nothing happens in a Chekhov play.” This grasping for the particular meaning in Chekhov’s project is understandable. One of the founders of theatrical realism, Anton Chekhov’s radical contribution to theatrical literature is perhaps also the most perpetually misunderstood.

Uncle vanya paul schmidt