One of the big projects this term is a cut down version, about an hour and forty minutes, of Anton Chekovs The Cherry Orchard.
Synopsis: After five years abroad Madame Luyba Ravneskaya returns to her family estate, only to find that it is up for auction due to her large amount of debt. There she reunites with her daughters, Anya and Varya, her brother, Gayev, and family friend Lopakhin. Lopakhin, the son of a peasant of the estate, worked his way to riches. He continuously tries to rescue her throughout the play and gives her a way to make money and preserve some of her land. However it means cutting down the cherry orchard and her old home, in which the play is set. Frozen by her emotional connection to the only place where she has actually ever been happy, the death of her son, and by her own sins, she does nothing. Auction day comes and Lopakhin outbids the competition and buys the Ravneskaya estate. The ending scene is the family and servants saying good bye to their home as they get ready to leave for the train. They do so to the sound of the orchard being cut down.
Debated to be both a tragedy and a comedy, this show is often said to be one where ‘nothing’ happens. The focus of the play is in the subtext, which is rich and full of emotional depth. This is a brilliant play on which one should practice any scripting tecniques, because the moment you look past the words there is a mine full of gold nuggets to plunder and one quickly becomes engrossed in the absolute humanity of the relations. Also there is a very intersting parallel between the characters and the socio-political scene of the turn of the 20th century Russia, where the status of the aristocracy and the now ex-serfs were changing drastically.
I am playing Luyba Ravneskaya. Described by wikipedia as
“Ranyevskaya is the linchpin around which the characters revolve. A commanding and popular figure, she represents the pride of the old aristocracy, now fallen on hard times. Her confused feelings of love for her old home, and sorrow at the scene of her son’s death, give her an emotional depth that keeps her from devolving into a mere aristocratic grotesque. Most of her humor comes from her inability to understand financial or business matters.”
