Bitef

the play was rebelling against when it was written, the strongly repressive society and culture of the time gave an answer- but what does the "old", we are rebelling against, consist of? And who is Nina? Is she a naive "village girl", whose head was turned by fame, collapsing when reality contradicts her dreams? Or is she a cunning careerist, who wants to get to the top with the help of the famous writer? Is she an ambitious talent deserving a better life, destroyed by a weak, irresponsible man ("noticed her and destroyed her just of boredom")? At the end of the play, after experiencing a private life tragedy she returns as a provincial actress - is she broken? Is she deranged? Did she really follow her vocation, as she claimed? Or is it the same game, the same lie of life as her love forTrigorin? There are slightly different issues to discuss in connection with Arkadina and Trigorin, the two established artists standing on the other side of the generation conflict. We don't know if Arkadina is really a great artist, but she is undoubtedly a famous actress and we can also see her vanity, her egoism. In her case the question is whether she is playing just a game. When and in what degree is she honest? Is she right when having ideological and emotional clashes with her son, what are her intentions with him? Is she striving to find a careful balance in her relation with her son or is she simply dominating over Trigorin? And Trigorin, characterising himself as a "languid, mellow man", is he simply trying to live a comfortable life or is he an artist full of vocation, who submits private life to creation? Here I have to mention that in our performance a German actor, Tilo Werner is playing the role of Trigorin. Tilo Werner is working now together with the Krétakor Company for the second time (he participated also in the performance of Fatherland). We realised that he fits perfectly Trigorin's character: the famous writer arrives to the province not from the capital, but from abroad. The character of Sohn - Pjotr Nikolaevitch - Uncle Pjotr also raises a bunch of questions. What is his problem in fact? Is he ill in reality? Is he maybe even dying during the performance (as he did during the rehearsal period in one of the scene variants)? Or does he simply get ill because of being unable to act and decide? Is the reason of his problem the fact that he never ever in his life has done something useful? According to the original text, Sorin was a judicial president, almost a state counsellor, but as these notions have some kind of obscure meaning for us and probably also for the contemporary spectator, we substituted this with a profession more familiar for the nowadays'audience. Thus in our interpretation he became the president of the county cultural committee. Doctor Dorn, the permanent adversary and debate partner of Sorin, is also a mysterious character. He is perhaps the only and single person who doesn't wish to reach anything - is he standing above all? Is he a wise onlooker able to comprehend the surrounding events from a philosophical standpoint? Or, on the contrary, is he a cold person with no sentiments, not accepting any feelings because of comfort? Is he not reacting to the suppliant words of Masha because he knows he can't help her? Is this happening because he refuses to take over others' problems? Is he simply condemning

Masha just as he does everybody else? Is Polina having reasons for being jealous? Is she really madly in love with the doctor or she just simply doesn't love her husband? Why does she interfere in Masha's problem in act IV? Is she sorry for the girl or she just wants to kill time? In the performance we have slightly changed Polina's role: she became Masha's stepmother, instead of the original mother-character; the change was performed because of the small age difference between the two actresses. According to some of the interpretations, Masha is the"secret heroine" of the play. She is always on stage, all acts start with her figure; she adores Treplev, but what does she think about the other participants of the story? Is she angry with them? Does she despise them? Does she consider herself superior to the rest? Is she a drinker because of her timidity? Does she really think that she can blot out her love for Kostia if marrying Medvedenko? Chekhov has deleted a great part of Medvedenko's text in the final variant in order to avoid him becoming a caricature character on stage (these texts have survived in the censor’s exemplary). We reinserted a few of his fussy sentences, still hoping that we didn't falsify thus the concept of Anton Pavlovitch. And then we finally have Shamraev, the bailiff. He, a practical man, does he flatter Arkadina because of a respect for arts? Or does he stealthily despise the whole intellectual company? Does he know that his wife has a love affair with the doctor? Is he jealous or indolent? We were discussing an abundance of such issues connected to the features, sentiments, intentions of the characters; the relations they have to each other, how these relations change, transform and develop during the performance. Chekhov's play presents in an incredibly subtle and precise way the complicated net of the characters'human and emotional relations. However, this is only one layer of the play's meaning. The other, also very important topic is connected to theatre and producing theatre. As we immersed in the work, a strange sensation has grown out of it. We got the feeling that Chekhov has been playing an amazingly refined and artful game both with the audience and us. He starts this drama in which everybody is playing a role, with putting onto the stage a stage with no scenery but merely the lake and the moonrise, while perfectly knowing that it will be presented in a theatre where there is no lake, no moonrise, but scenery. "It's driving me mad when these ancient fossils play to me in a three-walled room how people eat, love and wear their coats"- says at the beginning of the play an actor who mostly plays in a three-walled room how Kostia Treplev eats, loves and wears his coat. Chekhov's Treplev, denying the falsehood of this theatre wants a theatre where life is "as we see it in our dreams"- still Chekhov himself has not written surrealist dream-theatre, but plays to be presented in three-walled rooms instead. In their time, the Seagull of both Chekhov and Stanislavsky has been a starting point for a theatre revolution that is even now determining the notion of theatre. Chekhov's truth, Chekhov's theatre is still a living and valid art-during the rehearsals and discussions about the play this proved to be true again. It is the same difficult to revolt against it as to find a really new form that has never existed before. Thus we drew the conclusion that Kostia Treplev drew at the end of