I have a new writing project - a version of Chekhov's Three Sisters, which I am directing in November.
You might wonder why I would want to do this when there are four or five modern translations on the market, some of them very playable.
I have asked myself this question once or twice, suggesting to myself a certain arrogance and foolhardiness in presuming to rewrite Chekhov of all people. But in reality, we are not dealing with the words of the master, but the translator's take on them, which is inevitably influenced by the lugubrious Stanislavskian manner of doing the plays. The acme of this is probably the Olivier/Plowright filmed version which is ponderous and self-important. Even so, I remember weeping through it copiously in the cinema. Yes, reader, we used to watch films in a cinema in my youth.
I want Three Sisters to be light and fast and airy, and incidentally shorter, and free from the drawing-room/naturalistic mode of playing associated with Chekhov. I know I have repeatedly said that it makes no sense to move Chekhov to another era, (I may be wrong about that) but you can play it in another style. Or so we are about to find out. The translations are all linked, in my mind, to the built-set, perfectly-accurate-uniforms manner of playing, which constrict the play. A revered designer came to see a rehearsal of student production in which I played Masha; he said "You're not using that champagne bottle in performance, are you? Champagne bottles didn't have gold on the label at that period."
Misplaced attention to detail, methinks. We worried about getting the champagne bottle right, not about the truth of our performances.
I'm probably being unfair on the translators, but I feel that by making the script my own, I can free my imagination from the shackles of past productions.
Currently I doing prep work. I've being doing prep for a while now. I could make the prep work spin out for a very long time, giving me the illusion of being very busy about my play, and then at the end, opt for one of the translations.
If I do, feel free to mock me publicly for pretentiousness.
In the meantime I am finding lots of displacement activities, not only rehearsals for our 1950's, Paris Left Bank All's Well (my idea, but that's about all I've contributed to the production so far), but things like sorting out the filing, defrosting the freezer, overhauling out the first aid box, weeding... all worthy activities, which fill me with a great sense of achievement, even though all I've done is clear the shamefully overdue backlog of ordinary living. Amazing how one can keep a tube of antibacterical cream for ten years after its use-by date. And I have discovered a hitherto-unknown species of woolly mammoth in the freezer.
