Unfulfilled lives, loves mark 'The Seagull'

Chloe McConnell Guest Writer

The Woodshed Theatre Ensemble’s new production, Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” evokes both pathos and humor through romantic confrontations. Today, the ensemble will raise the curtain on the classical Russian play, co-directed by Jamie Watkins ’10 and Meg Dallett ’08.

After producing Naomi Iizuka’s “The Polaroid Stories” last spring, the ensemble wanted to explore different forms of drama. “We wanted to deconstruct our reputation as an avant-garde-only theatre group and really challenge our primary theatrical toolset,” said Sasha Steinberg ’09, who plays Constantine Treplev, the son of the lead character.

“[The play] deals with the experience of obsession, love, betrayal and disillusionment,” said Watkins. “For us, that is what makes ‘Seagull’ so enduring, and the reason why it is still a compelling and engaging piece to both perform and watch.”

“The Seagull,” first staged in 1896, follows the destructive triangular relationship that develops when a famous actress, Madam Irina Arkadina, played by Ariana Venturi ’08, visits her son Constantine Treplev and her sister Petra Sorina (Emily Ripp ’09) at their country estate.

“What happens on stage,” wrote Chekhov, “should be just as complicated and just as simple as things are in real life. People are sitting at a table having dinner, that’s all, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being torn apart.”

The undercurrents of the characters’ relationships reflect their struggle with the burden of unfulfilled lives and unrequited love. Chekhov’s characteristic use of subtext lends a dimension of reality to the stage, while his allusions to other literary texts (notably “Macbeth”) remove the audience from the theatrical experience to highlight the absurdity of the characters’ situations.

Woodshed selected “The Seagull” for its text and intriguing characters. “It is truly an ensemble piece; there are many characters, all of whom have highly interesting, and in some cases, highly charged, interactions with each other,” said Hannah Gold ’10, who plays Paulina Shamrayev. “There are a number of big group scenes, and each of the characters contributes a different kind of energy to the group to create a strange bunch of people and a cacophony of different voices.”

“We’ve discovered a nearness, a sympathy in these people,” said Venturi. “Their stories are both sentimental and absurd, hilarious and hilariously tragic.”

The Royal Shakespeare Company recently staged the play with “King Lear” in New York and Los Angeles, starring Ian McKellen as Sorin.

Woodshed altered the original script by cutting most minor characters, changing roles and minimizing the production value. They also cast the main character, Peter Sorin, as a woman, “which alters a number of parent-child dynamics in the play. [Sorin’s] presence also provides a comparison between the very few life paths Russian society in the late 1800s offered women,” said Dallett.

Venturi explained that the ensemble designed the play to emphasize the emotional authenticity of the characters’ relationships.

“We wanted to strip down our typical usage of media, sound, even lighting, to truly expose the text,” she wrote in an e-mailed statement. “What we’ve come up with is a very organic, minimalist plunge into the world of the play. We’ve set it in the round because we wanted the fervent veracity of these characters to engage the audience without the encumbrance of the proscenium.”

Woodshed is looking forward to an all-classical year, as its members are planning to stage a Shakespearean play next semester.
“I think one reason people enjoy seeing our shows,” Venturi continued, “is because we somehow always manage to rethink the ideology or preconceived notions of a particular play during the span of the performance.”