3 sisters summary of actions. Olga Podolskaya
The source of conflict in the play is the motive of the loneliness of a modern person in his family, among the people he loves and who love him. But this is not physical loneliness, when no one is around in the literal sense. This is the absence of a kindred spirit who would understand all the moods of the soul, to whom hopes and dreams would be close.
In Chekhov's play, all the characters - the Prozorov sisters, their brother Andrei, their friends at home - are separated and lonely, despite the fact that they love each other. These heroes are helpless: they cannot understand either themselves or those around them.
Of course, the problems of family and love occupy an important place in the play; all the characters act around them. But still, the main question for everyone remains: “How to live?” In the first act, Irina’s joyful words are heard: “When I woke up today, got up and washed my face, it suddenly began to seem to me that everything in this world was clear to me, and I know how to live.” But the naivety of these words becomes clear in the next action: “...But it turned out to be all nonsense, nonsense!”
Masha is also disappointed, but only in love. It seemed to her that she had found exactly what she needed, the right person. She says about her husband: “He seemed to me then terribly learned, smart and important. But now it’s not the same, unfortunately.” Masha says about Vershinin: “At first he seemed strange to me, then I felt sorry for him, ... then I fell in love.” And at the end of the play she says: “Unsuccessful life... I don’t need anything now...”.
Andrei’s thoughts are similar to these words: “When I got married, I thought we would be happy, everyone would be happy... But my God... (cries).” Olga also has her own dreams, which also turn out to be unfulfilled.
Confusion, disappointment, awareness of deception unites all the main characters of the play. Their scattered exclamations merge into one: “how time passes,” “what if we could start life again,” “how life deceives!”, “life flashed by like lightning.” The sisters' desire “To Moscow!” To Moscow!" and its impracticability become in the play a symbol of disappointed hopes.
The main characters of "Three Sisters" are unhappy, but the meaning of the play is not limited to depicting the unhappy life of unhappy people. By the way, this is exactly what contemporary critics accused Chekhov of. The author allows you to see and penetrate deeply into the reasons for the misfortunes of his heroes. The uniqueness of the conflict in this play lies in the fact that, pitting different heroes or groups of heroes against each other, the author insists that they are all connected, albeit covertly.
Here, many heroes are both themselves unhappy and the cause of the misfortune of others. Therefore, Natasha, Soleny, Chebutykin, Kulagin are not opposed to the other heroes. Each of them has their own idea of happiness, their own life program. And each of them tries to convey their “truth” to the others.
But to others this “truth” seems either funny, or stupid, or strange. And he encounters ridicule, or rudeness, or indifference from those around him. Tuzenbach tells Olga: “You’re talking such nonsense, I’m tired of listening to you,” in response to her revelation about how happy she would be not to work and to get married. And when Masha tells Olga about her love, Olga will call it nonsense. Tuzenbach, who dreams of working and finding reciprocity with Irina, constantly encounters her coldness. Irina responds even colder to Solyony’s declaration of love for her.
And the rest of the heroes have the same misunderstanding of each other. Each is absorbed in his own view of things, unable to understand the other’s point of view. In response to his changes or frankness, he is met only with ridicule or rudeness.
Here the author talks about the imaginary nature of forms sacred to man: about the family, about children, about the intelligentsia’s faith in work, in suffering for the sake of future generations. The conversations of the characters in the play about the future, about the meaning of life, about the need to believe in a happy future are in contrast with the absurdity of their real situation, with their everyday behavior.
It is here that the author shows the manifestation of the irony of life. But by the end of the play it becomes clear that all disputes, dreams, hopes are a necessary part of the lives of these people. In spite of everything, they “damn want to live,” “they have to live,” “and they want to live!” And while the heroes have this desire to live, the desire to believe and try to look into the future is just as natural for them.
This is precisely where the uniqueness of the conflict in the play lies. All complex, universal, seemingly insoluble conflicts between the characters at the end of the play come down to a simple desire - “Live!” This positive attitude towards the future is especially valuable in the play.
Baron Tuzenbach, a Russified German, born in St. Petersburg, “cold and idle,” is the happiest man in the play. He acutely feels the “borderline”, “turning point” of the present time and with his whole being is directed towards the approaching “hulk”, “a healthy, strong storm”, which “will blow away laziness, indifference, prejudice towards work, rotten boredom from our society.”
Tusenbach’s ardent conviction in the need for work, consistent, obligatory work for every person (“In some twenty-five to thirty years, every person will work. Everyone!”) is reflected in his “German” healthy love for “order”, for the reasonable the structure of life, his belief in meaningful, creative work that transforms society and man. Here we find closeness to the image of Stolz (“Oblomov” by I.A. Goncharov).
Tuzenbach is devoid of skepticism and is not inclined to look at the current state of life as hopeless. He believes that in the future “life will remain the same, life is difficult, full of secrets and happy.” He is highly endowed with the “gift of insight into life,” the gift of love for life, the gift of being happy even in an unrequited feeling for Irina. Her “longing for work” is clear and close to him. And he never tires of supporting Irina’s spiritual strength with his cheerful belief in life.
Tuzenbach not only dreams of a “new life”, but also prepares for it: he resigns, chooses a job as an engineer at a brick factory and plans to go there after marrying Irina: “I’ll take you away tomorrow, we’ll work, we’ll be rich, dreams yours will come to life. You will be happy." But an absurd, ordinary, “always on” skirmish with Solyony led to a duel. T.’s farewell to Irina is absolutely devoid of “pre-duel fever” (cf. “Duel” by Chekhov, “Duel” by Kuprin). On the contrary, the usually soft, always conciliatory T. displays courage and enormous “concentration of calm and pain” (P.A. Markov). As if seeing the beauty of the surrounding nature for the first time, feeling the living trembling of autumn leaves, Tuzenbach utters the words that became the result of his life’s faith: “What beautiful trees and, in essence, what a beautiful life should be around them!”
SOLYONY is the central character of A. P. Chekhov’s drama “Three Sisters” (1900). Staff Captain S., by type of character and mental structure, belongs to those people who are usually called heavy. In his appearance, behavior, in going against general dialogue, remarks, some kind of “ritual” spraying of hands and chest with perfume - there is some kind of “composition”, conspicuous “inauthenticity”; out of shyness, he created for himself the image of a “terribly scary person,” a brethren, and is now forced to constantly confirm and support it. Critics noted his similarity with Dostoevsky’s “underground” heroes (for example, Ganya Ivolgin in “The Idiot”), and analyzed his “philistine Byronism ", a cheap imitation of Lermontov. "Case C." - this is a case of “an idea that fell into the street,” that is, into the head of a poorly educated, uncultured person, and led to a distortion of his personality. “He is too little educated and too little a poet to imitate Lermontov” (Vl. I. Ne-Mirovich-Danchenko). S. is burdened by his bitterness, and probably he wants to break out of the circle of loneliness in which he has imprisoned himself. After all, alone with someone, with the same Tuzenbach, he is “both smart and affectionate.” S. hopes that Irina will help him break this circle: “You can see the truth... Only you alone can understand me.” But his love - as oppressive and heavy as he himself - scares Irina, and she coldly asks not to speak her about love. S. swore “to all the saints” that he would “kill his rival,” and did it. Indeed, some kind of “tarara boombia”: a wonderful man was killed, the hopes of a sweet, intelligent woman were dashed, and now S. will be counted no longer three, but four duels.
According to Chekhov, “It was terribly difficult to write Three Sisters.” After all, there are three heroines, each should be like their own model, and all three are the general’s daughters.” Educated, young, graceful, beautiful women are “not three units, but three-thirds of three,” one soul that has taken “three forms” (I.F. Annensky). In the “trinity” of heroines there is a masterly difficulty in constructing a play.
The time of action - the life of the sisters - is shown by Chekhov in breaks: in “scraps”, “passages”, “accidents”. Spring afternoon of the first act; winter twilight of the second; a summer night, illuminated by the reflections of a fire raging in the city; and again the day, but already autumn, farewell - in the fourth act. From these fragments, scraps of destinies, an internal, continuous in the “undercurrent” of the play, “the cantilena of the life of Chekhov’s heroines” (I.N. Solovyova) arises.
The sisters are given a keen sense of the fluidity of life, passing by and/or imaginary, lived “in rough drafts.” In addition to the will and desire of the sisters, it turns out “wrong”: “Everything is not done our way” (Olga); “This life is damned, unbearable,” “unsuccessful life” (Masha); “Life is leaving and will never return”, “You are leaving a real wonderful life, you are going further and further into some kind of abyss” (Irina). The sisters perceive the flow of life as a “huge inert river” Nemirovich-Danchenko), carrying faces, dreams, thoughts, and feelings into oblivion, into the past disappearing from memory: “So they won’t remember us either. They will forget."
The scene of action is the house of the Prozorov sisters, a space of life ennobled by them, full of love, tenderness, spiritual closeness, hopes, melancholy and nervous anxiety. The house appears in the play as a space of culture, the life of the spirit, as an oasis of humanity and “mass of light” among “spiritual darkness” (cf. the Turbins’ house in “The White Guard” by M.A. Bulgakov). This space is fragile, permeable and defenseless under the pressure of the provincial vulgarity triumphant in the person of Natasha.
The development of action in the play is associated with the gradual impoverishment of the living joy of life among the Prozorov sisters, with a growing feeling of the annoying incompleteness of existence and with a growing thirst for understanding the meaning of the life they live - meaning, without which happiness is impossible for them. Chekhov's thought about the human right to happiness, about the need for happiness in human life permeates the depiction of the life of the Prozorov sisters.
Olga, the eldest of the sisters who serves as a teacher at the gymnasium, lives with a constant feeling of weariness from life: “I feel like drops of strength and youth are leaving me every day.” She is the spiritual backbone of the house. On the night of the fire, a “tormenting night” when O. seems to have “aged ten years”, she takes upon herself the nervous breakdowns, confessions, revelations and explanations of her sisters and brother.
She hears, feels, perceives not only what they say, but also the unspoken inner pain - she supports, consoles, forgives. And in the advice to Irina to “marry the baron,” her unspoken thought about marriage breaks through: “After all, people don’t get married for love, but only to fulfill their duty.” And in the last act, when the regiment leaves the city and the sisters are left alone, she, with words of encouragement and consolation, seems to push aside the darkness of the thickening spiritual emptiness: “The music plays so cheerfully, so joyfully, and, it seems, a little more, and we will find out why we we live, why do we suffer...” In spite of the triumphant, visual, spreading vulgarity (lisping Natasha, Andrei hunched over the stroller, the always happy Kulygin, “tara-pa bumbia” Chebutykin, who has long “didn’t care”) O.’s voice sounds a yearning appeal: “If I would know if I knew..."
Masha is the most silent of the sisters. At the age of 18, she married a high school teacher, who seemed to her “terribly learned, smart and important.” For her mistake (her husband turned out to be “the kindest, but not the smartest”) M. pays with the feeling of emptiness of life that haunts her. She carries the drama within herself, maintaining her “isolation” and “separateness.” Living in high nervous tension, M. increasingly succumbs to “merlechlundia,” but does not “sour,” but only “gets angry.” M.’s love for Vershinin, expressed with courageous openness and passionate tenderness, made up for the painful incompleteness of existence for her, forced her to seek the meaning of life, faith: “It seems to me that a person must be a believer or must seek faith, otherwise his life is empty, empty...”. M.'s lawless affair with a married man, the father of two girls, ends tragically. The regiment is transferred from the city, and Vershinin leaves forever. M.'s sobs are a premonition that life will again become “empty”: meaningless and joyless. Overcoming the feeling of spiritual loneliness that gripped her, M. forces herself to believe in the need to continue life. Already life itself becomes for her a duty towards herself: “We will be left alone to start our life again.” Her words “We must live, we must live” sound in unison with the Olgins’ “If only I knew, if only I knew...”.
Irina is the youngest of the sisters. She bathes in waves of love and admiration. “Just in sails,” she is carried by hope: “To finish everything here and to Moscow!” Her thirst for life is fueled by the dream of love, of expressing her personality in work. After three years, Irina works at the telegraph office, tired of a stultifying, joyless existence: “Work without poetry, without thoughts is not at all what I dreamed of.” No love. And Moscow is “dreamed of every night” and forgotten, “like a window or a ceiling in Italian.”
In the last act, I. - matured, serious - decides to “start living”: “marry the baron”, be a “faithful, submissive wife”, work at a brick factory as a teacher. When Tuzenbach’s stupid, absurd death in a duel ends these hopes, I. no longer sobs, but “cries quietly”: “I knew, I knew...” and echoes the sisters: “We must live.”
Having lost their home and loved ones, parted with illusions and hopes, the Prozorov sisters come to the idea of the need to continue life as a fulfillment of their moral duty to it. The meaning of their life shines through all the losses - through spiritual resilience and opposition to everyday vulgarity.
VERSHININ is the central character of A.P. Chekhov’s drama “Three Sisters” (1900). Lieutenant Colonel V., the battery commander, is the same Russian man who, in his own words, “was tormented with his wife... tormented with the house...”, “endures and only complains.” Coming to visit the Prozorov sisters, V. finds himself in his native space - warmth, culture, innate noble delicacy. He admires their “wonderful apartment” and admits that in his life he always lacked just such an apartment - “with flowers, with a lot of light...”. Living his life “in rough drafts,” V. regrets that “his youth has passed,” leaving him with the ability to endure the hardships of life and the habit of “philosophizing” with or without reason. His main idea about life, which he never tires of repeating, is the idea that “in two to three hundred years, life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, amazing” and a person should “anticipate it, wait, dream, prepare for it.” V. looks at “present life” as if from this distant future - like through inverted binoculars. He is convinced that real happiness is unthinkable and impossible. And he doesn’t really believe in Tuzenbach’s ability to be happy even now: “There is no happiness, there should not be and there will not be for us.”
From complaints, confidential conversations, disputes and “philosophizing”, it is unknown how and why Masha’s beautiful, lofty love came through and illuminated his life with happiness. V. still claims that his youth has passed, he is still stubborn and returns to thoughts about what will happen “in two or three hundred years.” But he is already seized by a new, special mood: “I want to live like hell...” On the night of the fire - a “painful” night of nervous breakdowns, mental fatigue - Masha and V.’s declaration of love sounds beautiful and powerful: “All ages are submissive to love...” This love shook V.’s convinced philosophical pessimism. Before separation forever, he “philosophizes” for the last time: “Life is hard. It seems to many of us dull and hopeless, but still, we must admit, it is becoming clearer and easier ... "
Three sisters, Olga, Masha and Irina, daughters of the recently deceased General Prozorov, live with their brother Andrei in one of the northern provincial cities of Russia. They are young: the eldest, Olga, is 28 years old in the first act of the play, and the youngest, Irina, is 20. Only one of them is married, Masha. [Cm. full text of “Three Sisters” on our website.]
Despite their youth, the sisters already feel dissatisfied with life. Olga teaches at a gymnasium and does not like this job, which irritates and tires her. Masha is not too happy with her dry, narrow-minded husband Fyodor Kulygin. Irina does not yet have a job, and she is oppressed by a useless, aimless existence, devoid of tension and work. The sisters love to remember with excitement their joyful childhood spent in Moscow. Their family left Moscow 11 years ago, but it still seems to Olga, Masha and Irina that returning to this city would change their whole destiny, illuminating it with a new, bright meaning. Leaving for Moscow becomes a cherished dream for them, which - alas! – for various reasons it is difficult to implement.
The first action of Chekhov's play takes place during Irina's birthday. Acquaintances of the sisters gather for it - most of them are officers serving in the battery, which was previously commanded by their father. These are: the sincere, but absent-minded and prone to drunkenness, the elderly military doctor Chebutykin; the kind, passionate, but ugly lieutenant Baron Tuzenbach; the strange staff captain Solyony, always constrained in society and therefore angry and aggressive; Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vershinin, who, being deeply unhappy from his wife’s constant absurd antics, seeks consolation in dreams of how wonderful the life of future generations will be. Andrei's fiancée, Natasha, a stupid, whiny, but cunning and money-grubbing girl, also comes to the birthday party.
"Three sisters". Performance by the Maly Theater based on the play by A. P. Chekhov
Chekhov's "Three Sisters", act 2 - briefly
The second act of “Three Sisters” takes place a year or two after the first, during the New Year holidays. The life of Olga, Masha and Irina does not get better during this time. Olga continues to work at her unloved gymnasium. Masha begins to have a love affair with Vershinin, but he cannot leave his own family, where two little daughters are growing up, for her sake. Irina, who had previously dreamed of useful work, goes to work at the telegraph office, but in her position she finds not inspiration, but routine and boredom. The romantic, but outwardly unattractive Tuzenbach and the embittered bully Solyony fall in love with her at the same time.
Andrey is already married to the stupid and greedy Natasha, and has a little son from her, “Bobik”. Family concerns completely ruin Andrei’s previous plans for a scientific career. Instead, he has to be content with the insignificant position of secretary of the zemstvo government. The pliable Natasha makes an increasingly close acquaintance with the head of the council, Protopopov. Out of grief, Andrei begins to drink, gets involved in gambling, and loses large sums.
The vulgar reality increasingly makes the three sisters dream of “leaving for Moscow.” But this departure has been postponed so many times that there is less and less hope for it. Natasha, who has settled in her sisters’ house, behaves more and more like a housewife. Referring to the child’s ill health, she removes Irina from a separate room, demands to receive guests less often, not to invite mummers to the winter holidays, and she openly goes for a ride in a troika with Protopopov.
Chekhov's "Three Sisters", act 3 - briefly
A couple more years will pass. The third act of Chekhov's play takes place during a large fire that destroys an entire city block. Olga distributes old things from the house to the fire victims, but Natasha, who has completely taken Andrei into her hands, is very dissatisfied with such generosity. Natasha commands the house, shouts rudely at the servants and is about to kick out the nanny Anfisa, who looked after all three sisters in childhood, but now, due to old age, has become unable to work, without a piece of bread. Natasha gave birth to a second child, apparently from Protopopov. Andrei, who had fallen into a lack of will, lost to smithereens and voluntarily mortgaged the house, which belongs to him not alone, but together with his sisters, to the bank. Natasha took all the money received as bail.
Masha has a hot affair with Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin. But this idealistic dreamer, preacher of a future ideal life, cannot abandon his daughters in order to unite with her. Irina went to work from the telegraph to the zemstvo government, but even there she found only vulgarity and routine. Tuzenbach proposes to her. Not loving the baron, but not finding a better match, Irina agrees to marry him. Tuzenbach quits military service and looks for a position at a brick factory. He and Irina are going to go there together and there, perhaps, they will finally find the meaning of life. Her former unlucky admirer, the vengeful Solyony, is greatly annoyed by Irina’s rapprochement with the baron.
There is a rumor that the artillery brigade and all its officers will soon be transferred from the city to somewhere far away. The sisters will lose many old friends, and Masha will lose Vershinin.
Chekhov. "Three sisters". Audiobook
Chekhov's "Three Sisters", act 4 - briefly
The artillery brigade leaves the city. Irina and Tuzenbach should get married tomorrow and go to the brick factory. Irina, who passed the exam to become a teacher, hopes that this new profession will breathe fullness into her existence. But right before the brigade leaves, the evil Solyony starts a quarrel with Tuzenbach on the boulevard and challenges him to a duel.
The sisters sadly say goodbye to their familiar officers. Masha breaks up with Vershinin with pain in her heart. Olga was appointed head of the gymnasium, and she now lives in a separate apartment, where she also took her nanny Anfisa. Natasha, to whom Protopopov no longer hesitates to go home, is glad that Irina will also leave home.
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Characters
Prozorov Andrey Sergeevich.
Natalya Ivanovna, his fiancee, then his wife.
Olga
Masha his sisters.
Irina
Kulygin Fedor Ilyich, gymnasium teacher, Masha’s husband.
Vershinin Alexander Ignatievich, lieutenant colonel, battery commander.
Tuzenbakh Nikolay Lvovich, baron, lieutenant.
Soleny Vasily Vasilievich, staff captain.
Chebutykin Ivan Romanovich, military doctor.
Fedotik Alexey Petrovich, second lieutenant.
Rode Vladimir Karlovich, second lieutenant.
Ferapont, watchman from the zemstvo council, old man.
Anfisa, nanny, old woman 80 years old.
The action takes place in a provincial town.
Act one
In the Prozorovs' house. Living room with columns, behind which a large hall is visible. Noon; It's sunny and fun outside. The breakfast table is set in the hall. Olga in the blue uniform of a female gymnasium teacher, constantly correcting student notebooks, standing as she walks; Masha in a black dress, with a hat on her knees, sitting and reading a book; Irina in a white dress stands thoughtfully.
Olga. My father died exactly a year ago, exactly on this day, the fifth of May, on your name day, Irina. It was very cold and it was snowing then. It seemed to me that I would not survive, you lay in a faint, as if dead. But now a year has passed, and we remember this easily, you are already in a white dress, your face is shining...
The clock strikes twelve.
And then the clock also struck.
Pause.
I remember when they were carrying my father, music was playing and there was shooting in the cemetery. He was a general, commanded a brigade, yet few people came. However, it was raining then. Heavy rain and snow.
Irina. Why remember!
Behind the columns, in the hall near the table, the baron is shown Tuzenbakh, Chebutykin And Salty.
Olga. It’s warm today, you can keep the windows wide open, and the birches haven’t yet blossomed. My father received a brigade and left Moscow with us eleven years ago, and, I remember very well, at the beginning of May, at this time, everything in Moscow was already in bloom, warm, everything was flooded with sun. Eleven years have passed, but I remember everything there as if we left yesterday. My God! This morning I woke up, saw a lot of light, saw spring, and joy stirred in my soul, I passionately wanted to go home.
Chebutykin. Hell no!
Tuzenbach. Of course it's nonsense.
Masha, thinking about a book, quietly whistles a song.
Olga. Don't whistle, Masha. How can you do this!
Pause.
Because I’m at the gymnasium every day and then give lessons until the evening, I constantly have a headache and thoughts like I’m already old. And in fact, during these four years, while I have been serving in the gymnasium, I feel how strength and youth are leaving me drop by drop every day. And one dream only grows and gets stronger...
Irina. To go to Moscow. Sell the house, end it all here and go to Moscow...
Olga. Yes! More likely to Moscow.
Chebutykin and Tuzenbach laugh.
Irina. The brother will probably be a professor, he still won't live here. Only here is a stop for poor Masha.
Olga. Masha will come to Moscow for the whole summer, every year.
Masha quietly whistles a song.
Irina. God willing, everything will work out. (Looking out the window.) Nice weather today. I don’t know why my soul is so light! This morning I remembered that I was the birthday girl, and suddenly I felt joy, and remembered my childhood, when my mother was still alive! And what wonderful thoughts excited me, what thoughts!
Olga. Today you are all shining, you seem incredibly beautiful. And Masha is beautiful too. Andrei would be good, but he has gained a lot of weight, it doesn’t suit him. And I’ve gotten older, I’ve lost a lot of weight, which must be because I’m angry with the girls at the gymnasium. Today I’m free, I’m at home, and I don’t have a headache, I feel younger than yesterday. I’m twenty-eight years old, only... Everything is fine, everything is from God, but it seems to me that if I got married and sat at home all day, it would be better.
Pause.
I would love my husband.
Tuzenbach (To Solyony). You talk such nonsense, I'm tired of listening to you. (Entering the living room.) I forgot to say. Today our new battery commander Vershinin will visit you. (Sits down at the piano.)
Olga. Well! I am very happy.
Irina. He is old?
Tuzenbach. There is nothing. At most, about forty, forty-five years. (Plays quietly.) Apparently a nice guy. Not stupid, that's for sure. He just talks a lot.
Irina. Interesting person?
Tuzenbach. Yes, wow, just my wife, mother-in-law and two girls. Moreover, he is married for the second time. He makes visits and everywhere says that he has a wife and two girls. And he will say it here. The wife is kind of crazy, with a long girlish braid, says only pompous things, philosophizes and often attempts suicide, obviously to annoy her husband. I would have left this one a long time ago, but he endures and only complains.
Salty (entering the living room with Chebutykin from the hall). With one hand I lift only one and a half pounds, and with two, five, even six pounds. From this I conclude that two people are stronger than one, not twice, but three times, even more...
Chebutykin (reads a newspaper while walking). For hair loss... two spools of naphthalene in half a bottle of alcohol... dissolve and use daily... (Writes it down in a book.) Let's write it down! (To Solyony.) So, I tell you, the cork is stuck into the bottle, and a glass tube passes through it... Then you take a pinch of the simplest, most ordinary alum...
Irina. Ivan Romanych, dear Ivan Romanych!
Chebutykin. What, my girl, my joy?
Irina. Tell me why am I so happy today? It’s as if I’m on sails, there’s a wide blue sky above me and big white birds are flying around. Why is this? From what?
Chebutykin (kissing both her hands, tenderly). My white bird...
Irina. When I woke up today, got up and washed my face, it suddenly began to seem to me that everything in this world was clear to me and I knew how to live. Dear Ivan Romanych, I know everything. A person must work, work hard, no matter who he is, and in this alone lies the meaning and purpose of his life, his happiness, his delight. How good it is to be a worker who gets up early and breaks stones on the street, or a shepherd, or a teacher who teaches children, or a driver on the railway... My God, not like a man, it’s better to be an ox, it’s better to be a simple horse, if only work than a young woman who gets up at twelve o'clock in the afternoon, then drinks coffee in bed, then takes two hours to get dressed... oh, how terrible it is! In hot weather, sometimes I get so thirsty that I want to work. And if I don’t get up early and work, then deny me your friendship, Ivan Romanych.
The play “Three Sisters” based on the play by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was staged on the Main Stage of the Bolshoi Drama Theater by director Vladimir Pankov.
Many outstanding directors turned to the play - Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Yuri Lyubimov, Oleg Efremov, Ingmar Bergman, Christophe Marthaler and many others. In 1965, Georgy Tovstonogov created the famous innovative performance, which featured the leading artists of the BDT troupe.
Vladimir Pankov interprets the events in the Prozorovs’ house as “the polyphony of human life in time.” Preserving Chekhov's original text and early 20th-century costumes, the director presents the play as both happening “here and now” and as memories of something that happened a long time ago. Olga, Masha and Irina appear on stage at the same time in two ages: the audience sees the Prozorov sisters both as Chekhov described them, and as adults who have long experienced the events of the play. The roles of each of the sisters are played by several actresses: Olga is played by People's Artist of Russia Elena Popova and Honored Artist of Russia Tatyana Aptikeeva, Masha is played by Honored Artist of Russia Maria Lavrova / Honored Artist of Russia Ekaterina Tolubeeva and Karina Razumovskaya / Polina Tolstun, Irina - Lyudmila Sapozhnikova (who played Irina in BDT performance in 1965) and Yulia Deinega / Alena Kuchkova.
An important component of this performance - music - continuously accompanies the action and acts on equal terms with the dramatic text. String, wind, and percussion instruments perform either military marches or lyrical waltzes - most of the characters in the play have their own musical parts.
The director of the play, Vladimir Pankov, is the artistic director of the Moscow theater “Center for Drama and Directing” and the SounDrama studio. Composer Artem Kim is the musical director of the Omnibus ensemble and the theater. Mark Weil (Tashkent), as well as projects from the SounDrama studio; composer Sergei Rodyukov is the musical director of the SounDrama studio. Designer of scenery and costumes
for the performance - Maxim Obrezkov, chief artist of the Yevgeny Vakhtangov Theater and constant artist of Vladimir Pankov's performances. Choreographer Ekaterina Kislova also constantly collaborates with the SounDrama studio.
Andrey Moguchiy, artistic director of the BDT:
“Three Sisters” is a landmark performance for our theater. “Today is the premiere” - a documentary film by Semyon Aranovich - recorded the time, unique footage of the rehearsal process of Tovstonogov’s famous play, which became a real event in theatrical Leningrad in the 1960s. We see young Yursky, Basilashvili, Kopelyan, Doronina, Sharko, Trofimov, Strzhelchik, Shtil and many others. Irina in that performance was played by the young actress of the BDT troupe Lyudmila Sapozhnikova, and now, years later, she again appears in the role of Irina in Volodya’s play. It seems to me that this is very important when time, which, in fact, is discussed in Pankov’s production, acquires such a concrete, tangible embodiment.”
Vladimir Pankov, production director:
“In the play “Three Sisters” time will become a character. Without changing the text of the play, I would like to play within its framework “time” - its flow, expressiveness and the influence it has on people, their destinies and their reality.
While preparing for “Three Sisters” at the Bolshoi Drama Theater, I started thinking - what will happen to Chekhov in forty years? Many took notes in the margins of this play, it is greasy, words begin to fly out, some monologues are cut off, disappear, as if chewed up by time. Music is beyond everything and above everything. Therefore, we need to look for new musical laws in order to stage this. The entire universe is built according to the laws of music and mathematics.”
