gerbera_seagull
Anton Chekhov’s best known plays are not known for their movement—or if they are, it is for how little movement there is. Even after dramatic events, characters stay at rest, repeating mundane conversations. What, then, are we to make of The Seagull’s Nina, draped in what appears to be a very old, fragile dress, skateboarding past the other characters engaging in their usual dialogues?
This is not the typical revival of The Seagull but Tina Sutter and Half Straddle’s adaptation, Seagull (Thinking of You), performed at the New Ohio Theater in New York in 2013. On its surface, this production is a long way off from Chekhov despite the occasional exchange and song in Russian. We appear to be witnessing actors somewhere in the rehearsal process, but it can be hard to know where the characters end and the actors begin, especially Emily Davis’s haunted Nina. All the cast are playing actors playing roles, but in Davis’s case, she is an actor playing an actor playing an actor (as is Suzie Sokol, Madame Arkadina). These kinds of unfolding levels of reality are in the tradition of Pirandello’s Six Actors in Search of an Author and Charles Ludlam’s Stage Blood. As Helen Shaw wrote in “American Heroine”, her review of Satter and Half Straddle’s staging, Is This a Room: REALITY WINNER VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION, “Satter has a fastidious eye and a keen mind for choreography....” (https://www.artforum.com/performance/helen-shaw-on-tina-satter-half-straddle-s-is-this-a-room-78416). Everything we see appears deliberate, even if we are not sure what it means.
Chekhov’s characters claim to be in love, but none seem to be in a happy, healthy romance:. Medevenko desires Masha, who desires Treplev, who desires Nina, who desires Trigorin, who is in a relationship with Treplev’s mother, Arkadina. This is reflected by the backstage action of The Seagull (Thinking of You). At several points in the play, one of the fictional actors kisses another with more energy than tenderness. “Arkadina” implies that the part of sex she likes least is having another person there. Romance here is about power, not love. Perhaps this is true of Chekhov’s characters as well.
Similarly, the actors in The Seagull (Thinking of You) are struggling to connect to their play. Again, narcissism is getting in the way. They care more about being considered good actors than actually acting. Acting with others, like loving, must have a selfless component that the characters may lack. They have no trouble desiring each other, which is a selfish act. Perhaps none of the characters in either Seagull truly love, although there are signs of hope toward the end of The Seagull (Thinking of You).