Finita La Commedia
Rehearsal #12: Week 2 Wrap Up!
Finita La Commedia
Today we finished our second week, and we staged all of Act IV as well. Right on schedule, we’ve finished staging the whole play, and now we have 9 rehearsals in which we can go back over everything and give it another look. This is the time when the actors really start to know their lines and their characters, when you can see what staging works and doesn’t, when you pick some things apart and be pleasantly surprised when other things suddenly work. We start to put the real meat on the bones.
Since I haven’t written in a few days, I have miscellaneous thoughts for the readers. I hope without an order they can still be somewhat interesting. How about I put them in a list form to provide the illusion of order?
1) Literary Allusions: Today I noticed how many literary allusions there are in this play. More than in any of the other major Chekhov plays. Seagull has a fair amount of theatrical allusions, but Vanya has the literary ones - Turgenev comes up twice, and so does a mention of “like we’re in some kind of novel.” Since this is a play about people reconciling that dark contrast between their real lives and their dream lives, maybe the novels loom in their heads as either what reality should be or what it can’t ever be. Or both. What I wonder, though, is this: are these allusions giving us information about the characters - that they’re well-read? showing off to one another? - or is it a thematic clue. Is Chekhov himself making a comparison to a “Russian Novel,” or is it just the characters? I don’t know the answer.
2) Text / Sub-text: I think part of his genius is an understanding of how much sub-text we speak all day long every day. For instance, you ask me, “how was the show” and before I can answer “boring!” there are millions of images that flash through my head in less than a second. So I say “boring!” and it’s loaded with my memory of my bad experience at the show. I think Chekhov understood this about language, understood it in his bones. Every line the characters say has a tunnel of meaning that stretches out behind it. For every ten words there are ten million images.
3) Beckett: okay, look, I’m the furthest thing from a Beckett expert you could find. Just so you know that as a preface. Nonetheless, I will now proceed to make grand statements about Chekhov’s influence on him. [Indulge me, I'm only a grad. student for one more month, and then it will no longer be acceptable for me to wax on about things I know nothing about.] SO: I was really blown away today by the dialogue in Act IV, and how distinctly it reminds me of Beckett. As Astrov tells Vanya that it’s useless to wish for a better life, that this life is all we’ve got, I heard Endgame echoing in my mind: Use your head, can’t you? You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that. Then Sonya comes in at the end and insists, “We have to go on living.” It started to break my heart and give me chills the way a great Beckett play does. The images of nothingness, the great abyss…Chekhov could write that and still set his play in a drawing room. What a genius.
A very long blog…how tacky! I tend to get verbose late at night. Congratulations you for making it this far down the page.
Back on Tuesday for more Vanya Vanya Vanya …