![\"Darsan](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/DSC_3068.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nDarsan Purohit, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, for me, is more than a great Russian dramatist and writer, a world literary classic : he is a great explorer, the prophet & Columbus of the twentieth century theatre. Chekhov erected thousands of invisible memorials to himself in the hearts and minds of atleast three generations of writers. Anton Chekhov, never particularly friendly to the director\u2019s presentation of his plays, once described the stage as \u201ca scaffold where the playwright is executed\u201d! \u00a0While describing Chekhov\u2019s plays, Stanislavsky says, \u201cHis plays are extremely effective, but not in their outward development- they are effective by their inner development. Their charm does not lie in the dialogue; it lies in the meaning behind this dialogue, in the pauses, in the looks of the actors, in the way they display emotions. Everything comes to life in these plays: the properties, the sounds, the scenery, the images created by the players,the play itself. Here it is a case of creative intuition and artistic feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was Chekhov who suggested to Stanislavsky the line of intuition and feeling. To reveal the inner contents of his plays it is necessary to delve into the depths of his soul. Stanislarsky and the Art Theatre were the only one to have shown Chekhov successfully where the others had failed, and that at a time when its players were not yet mature. The reason being, that they had discovered a new approach to Chekhov, an altogether different approach, and that was their main contribution to dramatic art.<\/p>\n
But does this mean that the solution the Art Theatre had found to Chekhov\u2019s plays had deprived the theatre forever of the possibility of producing it differently? \u00a0Of course not, as is proved best of all by Nemirovich Denchenko & later by Tovstonogov, who created a completely new version of The Three Sisters. New ideas and new forms are part of the very fabric of Chekhov\u2019s plays. One needs time to discover them. Chekhov is inexhaustible because, notwithstanding the everyday life that they describe, the plots of his plays are not about casual, petty things, but about Man with a Capital M. Stanislavsky himself had played some of Chekhov\u2019s characters hundreds of times & every single performance aroused new feelings in him, that led to the discovery of new depths and subtleties.<\/p>\n
Among Chekhov\u2019s many faces, there is one turned directly towards the stage and the actors. This is the purely theatrical elements and principles, his interpretation of the purpose of our art, its nature, technique, devices for writing drama, and so on. In this professional sphere of our art, apart from all tendencies or socio-political tasks, it is not so important What the writer writes or What the actor acts, as How they do it. And we specialists in the field of acting and production would do well to study the late writer from this \u2013 his dramatic, scenic and artistic aspect.<\/p>\n
We had also better remember that Chekhov was an innovator in drama not only in the sense that he was creating something new for his time, but in his demand that the expressive means employed be new in relation to the time when the play is being produced. Here, I quote Stanislavsky, \u201cHas this been done? Which actor has studied Chekhov\u2019s dramatic technique, with its new devices, scope for stage direction and that special scenic quality, unknown before Chekhov, which demands a new actor\u2019s psychology and self-awareness?\u201d<\/p>\n
Chekhov\u2019s is a strict author, and he always deflates egoism on the part of actors. Stanislavsky, an innovator himself, grasped what was novel in the essence of Chekhov\u2019s works. But time has flown since then, and we should be that much wiser. It must be realised that a new time and new audiences required a new approach if the plays were to retain its vitality, and that time reveals a new ring , new ideas in Chekhov. We must not forget to bear in mind the essential condition of reading a classic from the standpoint of today.<\/p>\n
The theatre of a new kind of truth is emerging, poetic truth, which demands that the expressive means be made as precise and concrete as possible. Every action must be charged with meaning and not simply illustrative. In this way every detail on the stage becomes a realistic symbol. This, far from disregarding the basic principles of realism, makes realism poetic and figurative instead of naturalistic, which is perhaps what is needed today. In this regards, can we consider poetic truth to be one of the chief features of the contemporary style at the present stage to reveal poetic depth of the Chekhovian classics and sacrifice the art of external verisimilitude?<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch art provokes thought and excites the imagination far more than spectacular sets or acting that is ostensibly true to life but not dictated by the necessity of the super- objective\u201d, as expressed by G. Tovstonogov in his book \u201cThe profession of the Stage- Director.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although this demand is by no means new- Stanislavsky himself insisted that the most important thing on the stage was to recreate \u201cthe life of the human spirit\u201d- today it has arisen before us ina new quality and we must reinterpret a great deal in our practice if we are to capture the new, present- day nature of this law of art.<\/p>\n
The theatrical world is divided into two opposing camps in regard to the question whether the actor should partake of the passions of his part \u2013 weep himself in order to draw tears- or whether he should remain master of himself throughout the most impassioned and violent action on the part of the character which he represents ; in a word, remain unmoved himself, the more surely to move others , which forms the famous paradox of Diderot. Well, if we hold this paradox to be literal truth then the only way to achieve this is by applying the most stringent self- restraint on the part of an actor, not allowing him to slip into the comfortable, easy groove of the familiar and the achieved. On the contrary, he should be encouraged to develop his ability to express feeling and thoughts following the inner law according to which not a single physical action can be performed on the stage that is simply true- to- life without embodying some other, intrinsic meaning which demands mutual independence of head & heart in the artist. Having said that , it is far too easy to achieve this aim if we are doing Brecht, for example, but should we not try attempting Chekhov in this regards to produce a feeling of real palpable life within the frame work of the poetic, realistic symbol? For the right to consider himself [oneself] a contemporary actor or a director, one need not set out with an express aim of reinterpreting Chekhov, or amazing the world with a completely new version of Chekhovian classics but must strive to bring out in the work the thoughts and feelings that make Chekhov so necessary and vital today.<\/p>\n
In our age of advanced technology nothing but old clich\u00e9\u2019s and traditions is conceived for communication with \u201cthe beyond\u201d that is the world of the classics. Are we not duty bound to solve the problem of the theatrical classics? To solve it along with the major task- the creation of works reflecting the processes of present-day life. Here, I would like to share with you the views expressed by G. Tovstonogov on the contemporary director\u2019s work \u2013 \u201cEvery director may have his own way, but all the individual paths lead from the same point of departure \u2013 the attempts to break- free of all the customary, preconceived ideas about how they should be played in order to read them as though for the first time, as though they had just been written.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, would it not be a better idea to approach a classic as we would a contemporary play? Has the Chekhovian \u2018How\u2019 begun to live a full life in our contemporary theatres? These and many more such questions need to be answered. Though, a difficult task, a highly complicated one but not entirely impossible! Perhaps, its solution requires a collective effort.<\/p>\n
At this juncture, we are encouraged in our endeavor by none other than Stanislavsky, who writes, \u201cThe chapter on Chekhov is not yet finished. It has not yet been read properly and gone into thoroughly. The book has been closed too early.<\/p>\n
Let it be opened again, studied fully and read to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Darshan Satishchandra Purohit<\/p>\n
Associate Professor in Dramatics<\/p>\n
Faculty of Performing Arts<\/p>\n
The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda<\/p>\n
Vadodara<\/p>\n
Contact: 9825434395\/ 8511154395<\/p>\n
Email: darshanpurohit25@yahoo.com<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Darsan Purohit, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, for me, is more than a great Russian dramatist and writer, a world literary classic : he is a great explorer, the prophet & Columbus of the twentieth century theatre. Chekhov erected thousands of invisible memorials to himself in the hearts and minds of atleast three generations of writers. Anton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-education","category-top-stories-of-madhesh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/DSC_3068.jpg?fit=1024%2C683&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paS11m-hq","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/himalini.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}