CHARACTERS
IRINA is an actress entering what her society considers an advanced age for that profession. Sixty-ish. Beautiful.
TREPLEV is her son. Handsome in an affable, almost boyish way that belies his intensity. An aspiring experimental playwright. Thirty or almost.
SORIN is her brother. Sixty, which is somewhat younger than the way he acts in the play so we’re to assume sixty was simply “older” “back then,” when and wherever this Russian of the Mind turns out to be. He has a serious but not overbearing air.
NINA is a late teenager/young adult. She is young even for her years due to her isolated upbringing. The daughter of a nearby country squire, rich for the area. To play eighteen to twenty, young-looking.
SHAMREYEV was an officer in the infantry and is now long retired. He is the resident overseer of Sorin and Irina’s family estate. He is hands-on about managing the house and grounds.
POLINA is SHAMREYEV’s wife and helper. A handsome, working-class woman of the time and place (in our imagination. Fourties to fifties.
MASHA is SHAMREYEV’s and POLINA’s daughter. She is in her early twenties. Thoughtful and beautiful.
TRIGORIN is an established novelist. Is with IRINA. Dates NINA eventually. Old enough for there to seem an immediate impropriety to dating NINA, but very much a handsome man. Has wit and animation. Looks young for his fifties.
MEDVED is a school master who lives four miles from the estate. Earnest, he could be mistaken for a farmer but for how he dresses. Late twenties to early thirties. Perhaps looks just a tad too old to be courting MASHA.
DORN is the country doctor who is often at the estate tending SORIN. Not uncultured. Good looking. Late fifties.
YAKOV is the handyman and footman at the estate. He helps build the stage set on the estate for TREPLEV’s attempt at a play. Around thirty.
SETTINGS
Scene One is set outside IRINA and SORIN’s estate house in the country during the late afternoon into early evening.
Scene Two is also set outside the house but farther away from it and earlier the next day. We can still see the lake. There is grass.
Scene Three is set in the dining room of the big house the next morning.
Two years pass before Scene Four begins.
Scene Four is set in the living room (or parlor, if you like) of the big house, which TREPLEV has been using as his writing room and study. There are lots of books stacked around. It is a dark and stormy night.
ACT ONE
Evening outside a big country house in the 1880’s. MEDVED and MASHA walk up to where YAKOV is finishing up building a stage, which is obviously being roughly built from planks that were already around. A stage curtain has been improvised out of bedsheets and/or bedspreads. YAKOV is behind the curtain finishing up the improvised traveler for it. We hear him working as MEDVED and MASHA enter. SORIN’s country house is nearby.
MEDVED (entering): Anyway, why are you always dressed the
Same way every day? And why always black?
MASHA: I’m dressed for my life’s funeral. It sucks.
MEDVED: What the fuck? You look great. Your dad’s got cash.
Who cares if he’s not super rich. He’s flush.
My life is the one that sucks. It’s much worse. I could not afford my bills even if
My pension money wasn’t deducted.
I don’t make it worse by moping around
Feeling sorry for myself in black clothes.
It sucks, but it’s not a goth funeral.
MASHA: If money is what makes people happy
Then why are there so many millionaires
Who are so fucking miserable?
And then why is our handyman happy?
YAKOV (we hear him move from behind the curtain, which moves as he speaks): Woo-hoo! Hey! It works!
MEDVED: OK, maybe now.
But it won’t last. The way it really goes
Is that I’ve got my own needs, my mom has needs,
So do both of my sisters, and my brother
And he is getting bigger ev’ry day
And I make twenty-three rubles a month.
One salary, five people in the house.
That’s five to feed and five to buy clothes for.
And why can’t a working man buy some smokes?
Can’t we all at least have a cup of tea?
With at least a little sugar in it?
Poverty takes a lot of fucking work!
MASHA: The platform will be ready in time for the show.
They’ll start soon enough to catch the daylight.
MEDVED: Yeah, they will. The beautiful Nina
Starring. And written by her love Treplev,
The love-smitten, downtown, unknown playwright.
The play is like their pretentious love-child.
The play is their souls flowing together
Or some such trite poetical nonsense.
Not like us. You flow your way, I flow mine.
I shout my love for you, you make small talk.
I hike two hours each way to see you,
You chat with me to relieve your boredom.
MASHA: It—
MEDVED: I get it! I’m flat broke and feed five mouths.
How could you possibly look past all that?
MASHA: Bullshit. I mean, I know that you love me,
I’m flattered but I don’t feel that way for you.
I’m sorry if you can’t take that straight.
Here. (Takes out a small box) Have a snort? Don’t worry. It’s just snuff.
MEDVED: I’m not in the mood—
MASHA: —the wind has died down.
I bet it rains tonight. It feels like it.
Look, the only things you talk about are
Philosophy and poverty, OK?
Your whole point is that the worst thing to be is . . .
Poor! And that’s just . . . wrong. I would much rather
Be homeless! Live in shelters! Eat handouts!
Than live my life without—oh, never mind.
I’m spitting poetry at an egghead.
(TREPLEV and SORIN have walked in.)
SORIN: I’m just not cut out for the country life,
Kiddo. Can’t get used to it. Never will.
I fell asleep before dinner last night,
Did not wake up until after breakfast
And all it did was make me feel more tired!
It’s annoying to sleep like a peasant.
TREPLEV: Yes. You have to move back to the city.
(Then, to MASHA and MEDVED)
Hey, you guys can’t be here. Don’t spoil the show.
We’ll call you when we’re ready to open the house!
SORIN: Masha, do me a favor. Tell your dad
To let his dog off the leash at night, please.
The barking keeps my sister up all night
And then she spends the day barking at me.
MASHA: It will mean more coming straight from your mouth
And so I’ll leave that to you. Excuse me.
(To MEDVED) Come on—
MEDVED: —Make sure and call us when it’s on, OK?
(MASHA and MEDVED have left.)
SORIN: Oh, Christ. The dog will be barking again.
The country life has never worked out for me.
I took my time off from the army here,
My leaves, my holidays when I was young.
What’s so odd is that it has never been fun.
It’s never been what I thought it should be,
No idle days, no quaint country pastimes.
I can’t seem to leave the train platform here
Without ev-er-y-one and his brother
Running after me with demands. Demands!
It makes me want to get back on the train!
I liked leaving better than arriving.
I’ve retired here now, so—no leaving!
Where would I go? What would I do?
I kind of am this place now. Guess I always was.
YAKOV (pokes his head out of the bedsheets-curtain): Hey, boss, we’re gunna go jump in the lake—
TREPLEV: Yeah, sure. Just be ready before your call. (Checks watch.)
Which is fucking soon—
YAKOV: Thank you! Back for call!
TREPLEV (as YAKOV leaves): Well here’s a whole funky proscenium!
The curtains will open to frame the lake.
Then scenery becomes the set dressing.
Who could paint a scene like that anyway!
I want to open the curtain at eight
So that the sun sets as we do the show.
We’ll make one long fade up for the footlights!
SORIN: Great! I’ll reserve myself a front row seat
Before the riff-raff—
TREPLEV: Fuck! What if she’s late?
Nina being late would ruin the lights.
She’s already missed the half-hour call.
Her parents know nothing about theater.
They just know how to watch her all the time.
So Russian! There’s no way for her to leave.
Sorin, man. If your hair had gone all nuts
Would you want me to tell you or just shut up?
SORIN: Oh, Christ! An old soldier grows a beard or
Grows a belly, they say. It’s always been
My failing—not caring about my looks.
I’m very absentminded about it,
I never got dates when I was younger—
What’s bothering my sister? Do you know?
TREPLEV: I don’t know. Maybe she’s bored. And jealous.
She hates my productions she’s not in,
She hates Nina for being young and hot
And for being in the play she’s not in,
She hates me for not writing her a part.
She just hates the play on principle alone.
I know for a fact that she hasn’t read it.
SORIN: You’re kidding. That’s crazy, even for her.
TREPLEV: Here, even here on a stage of plywood
And two-by-fours! With bedsheets for curtains!
More mosquitos than audience members—
And she’s furious that she’s not the star!
My mother has played Moscow’s biggest rooms—
Where is ev’ryone? It’s got to be time—
I don’t know what to say about my mom.
She’s articulate and talented and
She feels deeply about literature—
Declaims Nekrasov, and it’s all by heart.
(imitating IRINA)
“The best of new clothes could not change her ways!”
No better nurse in the world if you’re sick.
And yet to even mention another
Actress, even Eleonora Duse,
With even the slightest positive bent
And she’ll hand you your balls on a platter.
Forget thanking Heaven for both of them!
You may only speak of her Marguerite—
You may only write of her Lady Macbeth—
And all of it with the greatest of praise!
You have to praise her acting to the Moon.
There is nothing like that for her out here.
And without incessant critical praise
She gets bored and then goes into withdrawal.
From withdrawal, it’s on to paranoia.
It’s ev-er-y-one’s fault but her own!
She trusts in that and in the horoscope
And in ev’ry superstition there is!
Black cats, the wrong number of candles—uh!
And she’s such a tightwad penny pincher.
At least seventy K in the bank and
If I even mention a tiny loan,
Oh, no! She turns into a weeping mess.
SORIN: You’re convinced that your mommy hates your play.
That’s all. It’ll pass. Your mommy loves you.
Get it together—
TREPLEV: —Yeah, I don’t think so. (Pulls out a coin.)
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think so. (Flips coin.)
Heads yes, tails no. Now we’ll see which it is. (Looking at coin.)
Tails! No love! She loved me when I was small
And now I just remind her of her age.
Flouncing around in bright floral prints,
Bright with life on the arm of some lover
And then I appear. “She’s that guy’s mother?”
On her own, she’s a sexy young actress.
When I’m near, she looks like a soccer mom.
I can see why she would hate me for that.
If I open my mouth it just gets worse.
She stars in the worst kind of theater:
Biased, conventional . . . boring! Trite.
In her mind, she’s a priestess of Art—
Enlightening, ennobling the world!
To her it’s Theater, capital “T”
That rhymes with “P” and stands for “Perfection!”
She thinks that what she does is a service;
I think that what she does is oppressive.
She and her whole clique of wannabe gods,
Imitation satyrs, and painted nymphs,
Bourgeois bacchantes! Fake Dionysuses.
Solipsistic trust-fund nepo babies
Pretending to have anything to say
To people with real lives and real problems—
Problems like stripping their tech-bro,
Wall Street Prejudice of the power of its entitlement.
They ape a real life they don’t understand,
Preaching with the power of pretension.
It’s worse when they perform in their salons
Pretending that sitting on their sofas
Is somehow an enabling art form.
They have perfected reassuring rich,
Pretty people that their shit is noble.
Radical behavior that won’t upset
Mommy and Daddy and the trust-fund purse.
A million productions of the same plot!
I have to get away from all of it.
Leave it behind like Maupassant left the
Eiffel Tower, that ungodly mess.
SORIN: The theatre is essential to life.
TREPLEV: Participation in the highest forms
Of art that our culture has to offer
Is a right, not a priv’lege.
All theater is “political.”
Public space must have collective purpose.
Let the dinosaurs of the old forms die
And new forms spring from their dead carcasses!
Of course I love my mom but what the fuck . . .
Even her love life is about eyeballs
Staring at her in pictures ev’rywhere.
That’s the whole point of her current affair:
Posing with that novelist for pictures.
It makes me tired just trying to follow—
Every once in a while I just wish
I had a normal mother. Is that wrong?
Why was I born to a famous actress?
Is it bad to think of normality
As being better than this existence?
My life is the plot of a bad novel:
I grew up in parties full of super-
Famous people. One normal little kid
Hanging around being baffled by them
While being completely ignored by them!
“Oh, that’s her son. Nothing much to him, though,”
They’d say of me as if I couldn’t hear.
Who am I to her? Who was I to them?
I dropped out of college my junior year
So they couldn’t say I was kicked out.
Slow I may be, but I knew what was up.
I have the passport of my father’s class,
Born in Kyiv, so to them I’m not Russian.
All my dad’s work in the theater of
Moscow as an actor couldn’t make him
A legit citizen in Russia’s eyes.
Even when all of those celebrities
Turned their big smiles and witty minds
At me, it was just humiliating.
It just amplified how normal I was.
SORIN: You know who I really don’t understand?
Her novelist. He doesn’t talk at all.
TREPLEV: He’s a smart guy, though somehow kind of sad.
Respectful. And surprisingly famous
Given that he’s not even fifty yet.
And he would never screw around on her.
He got all of that out of his system
Partying after his first bestseller.
He’s not burdened with any real talent
As anyone who’s read Tolstoy can see.
Yeah, after reading a Zola novel
Nobody wants to read one by Trigorin . . .
SORIN: I like writers, though. I wanted to write
Almost as much as I wanted a wife
When I was young. I wanted both badly
Although neither of them worked out for me.
To have had a novella published—it would have been sweet.
TREPLEV: Do you hear that? (Footsteps.)
Uncle! Embrace me now!
I can tell! It’s the sound of her footsteps!
Hearing their approach makes me mad with joy!
Oh, magic made real!
(NINA enters)
My daydream come true!
NINA: Oh, fuck. Please don’t tell me I’m fucking late—
TREPLEV (smooching her gloves): Never! Never, never, nevernever,
You are never late, you are
never early—
NINA: Oh?
I’ve been depressed about it all day.
I was so sure my dad would lock me in.
And then: bam! He took off with my stepmom.
I kept looking at the sky getting dark.
As the Moon rose ‘cause I don’t have a watch.
I think I scared the horse I was riding.
Put it there.
(Shakes SORIN’s hand.)
I’m ready to start the show.
SORIN: Oh! Has our leading lady been weeping?
You should be happy on opening night!
NINA: Oh, hell no! I’m just flushed from the riding.
I must get back right after this is done.
We have to get started. I don’t have much time.
I have to get back before they are home.
No matter what you say, I have to leave—
TREPLEV: You’re right on time. We should get started now.
Ev’ryone should be called to their places.
SORIN: I’ll do it. I know where they are.
(Sings.)
NACH FRANKREICH ZOGEN ZWEI GRENADIER DIE WAREN IN RUSSLAND GEFANGEN—
Scan the above with your mobile device for multimedia accompaniment.
And my friend said, “Your voice is really loud!
It’s a damn shame that you sing so badly!”
(Exits.)
NINA: My dada and stepmom have grounded me!
I’m not allowed to be near here or you.
They say it’s sinful here, and decadent!
They’re mad with fear that I’m going to take off
And become a professional actress.
I can’t stay away from here by the lake.
I feel like a cormorant? No! A gull.
And this is the only water around.
TREPLEV: The house is empty now except for us.
NINA: Somebody is there—
TREPLEV: —nobody is there. Come here and kiss me.
NINA: —OK, I’ll kiss you!
(They kiss.)
Do you know what kind of tree this one is?
TREPLEV: That one is am elm—
NINA: —it’s dark and spooky.
TREPLEV: All the trees are dark, the sun is setting.
Ev’rything is spooky: it’s getting dark!
I beg you not to leave after the show.
NINA: I can’t stay after. I’m not going to.
TREPLEV: I will follow you home like a puppy
And sit staring soulfully up at you,
Gazing at your window from your garden.
NINA: The night watchman would bonk you on the head,
The dog would lose his mind barking at you—
TREPLEV: I am in love with you—
NINA: —shut up, shut up!
TREPLEV: Uh, Yakov? Is that you?
YAKOV (from behind the curtain): —yes, it is sir.
TREPLEV: Places ev’ryone! Can you see the Moon?
YAKOV: Yeah, it’s ready.
TREPLEV: Have you got the alcohol and sulfur?
This is cutting-edge odor theater,
The audience has to smell the sulfur
Right when they see the red eyes in the smoke.
Go ahead, Nina. Get to your place now.
I set all your props. Do you have stage fright?
NINA: I don’t mind acting in front of your mom.
I know her. But what about Trigorin?
Acting in front of the famous writer?
What’s he like? Is he really old? Or young?
TREPLEV: Sort of.
NINA: I am such a huge fan of his stories!
TREPLEV: I’ve never read any of them myself.
NINA: It’s really hard to act in your play.
Nothing in it is like life.
TREPLEV: Life? I’m not interested in writing life.
It’s so trite. Fuck life. I want to write dreams!
NINA: Nobody does anything in your play.
They sit around talking. And they don’t kiss!
(NINA has run behind the curtain as DORN and POLINA have entered, looking for seats.)
POLINA: This is like a swamp! Go get your wellies.
DORN: Feels like a desert—
POLINA: —you need more self-care.
But you are stubborn. Doctors! Bad patients.
You know the falling damp is bad for you—
You’re only doing it to torture me.
You spent all day yesterday on the porch.
DORN: “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”
POLINA: You couldn’t stop talking to Irina.
Just admit that you have a crush on her!
DORN: Polina, I’m old—
POLINA: —well, you don’t look old.
You’ve just gotten more distinguished-looking.
Women go for men who look distinguished.
DORN: I can’t help what women think about me.
POLINA: Men are just crazy about actresses!
You’re just into her because she knows Brecht.
DORN: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!”
Artists aren’t the same as everyone else.
We regard them as a higher lifeform.
Or as our high priests and priestesses,
Or as the Muses who will transform us;
We want to see ourselves as one of them
And to live in their idealized world.
POLINA: And were all of the women who chased you
Also idealists? Are you a Muse?
DORN: That meant nothing. It wasn’t all that bad.
Lots of women have a thing for doctors.
A decade ago, I was the only
Legit doctor delivering babies
For miles around here in the country.
And I always treated ev’ryone well.
POLINA (grabs his hand): I want to grab more than your hand, doctor!
DORN: Quiet now—here come more ticket-holders!
(SORIN leads IRINA in with TRIGORIN, SHAMREYEV, MEDVED, and MASHA.)
SHAMREYEV: She was great at the Poltava Festival.
It was seventy-three and her acting
Was beyond incredible! She stole the show,
She stole the whole festival. I was just—
(To IRINA) Hey, do you know where that Chadim guy is?
He was so funny. Where is he these days?
On my word he was the funniest clown.
I swear he was the best one of them all.
Irina, do you know what he’s up to?
IRINA: If you want yesterday’s news, then you should
Look in yesterday’s newspaper, Shammy.
I have no idea where that old hack is.
SHAMREYEV: Chadin. They don’t make ‘em like that these days.
The theatre was once as great as you,
Irina, but now it’s gone downhill.
The playwrights used to grow giant forests,
Now they think little bonsais are clever.
DORN: We don’t have such great playwrights any more.
But we have more creative directors
Who can make bigger productions from crap,
Cut up old plays to make new spectacles,
Or make shit up and use an old title.
If a director has a foreign name,
They can call complete shit “innovation”
And get away with it, win raves for it!
SHAMREYEV: I don’t agree with anything you’re saying.
For the amount of money I’m paying
To see it, Ivo Van Hove must be great.
And all the bad plays are banned by the state.
IRINA: No state in its right mind would ban a play.
Here’s my boy. (TREPLEV has entered.)
When does your show start, honey?
TREPLEV: It’s opening night, so things are delayed.
IRINA: “Oh, Hamlet, speak no more!
Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grainéd spots
As will not leave their tinct.”
TREPLEV: “And let me wring thy heart, for so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuff.”
(Horn sounds.)
IRINA: How quaint. We usually dim the lights.
TREPLEV: Messieurs, dames, welcome to our theater!
The sky and trees are our painted backdrop.
Let your imaginations transport you!
(Stamps his feet, footlights come up.)
I summon ghosts from the skies
To hover over the lake
And bring sleep over our eyes
To in our sleeping brains make
Dreams that allow us to sense
Two hundred thousand years hence!
SORIN: Two hundred thousand years? They’ll be nothing!
TREPLEV: OK, then! Let’s look at that nothingness!
IRINA: I hope it’s interesting. So far, this sucks.
(Curtain up, NINA is sitting on a painted rock.)
NINA: Humans, lions, eagles, and other birds!
Hornéd stags, geese and ganders, spiders, dogs,
Fish from the deep never described by words!
Unknown salamanders, monsters, frogs!
All living things known and unknown are dead!
Ended, stopped, life itself has gone out,
Last oink oinked, last grunt grunted, a total rout.
The earth barren, for thousands of years blank,
The sad Moon lights the night for nothing now,
No frogs croak love songs from the lake’s bank,
No living meadow left for living cow.
Nothing’s living, creeping, walking, stirring.
Air that once moved with beating wings is still,
The cries of birds no longer occurring.
Yea, whip-poor-will no longer whips poor Will.
All is deserted, frigid, empty, cold,
Frightening, scary, chilled to the bone.
All that was living is dead, even mold.
The Universe turned their bodies to stone.
All of the souls have been fused into One
And that Soul is me speaking to you now!
Shakespeare, and Caesar, Attila the Hun,
Merged with all souls from leach to sow!
Human intelligence, instincts of beast.
I encompass all memories in me,
All people, all things from greatest to least.
I’ve been ev’rything, ev’rything’s been me.
IRINA (aside): This sounds like it was written by a child.
TREPLEV (stage whispering): Mom! Please!
(Louder.) Hey, Yakov, light up the will-o’-the-whisps!
(Lit will-o-the-whisps appear.)
NINA (continues): There’s no company for me, the One Soul!
Ev’ry hundred years, I talk to myself—
It echoes around, a terrible dole.
I’m a lonely toy on an infinite shelf.
Even these light little spirits don’t hear
The painful sadness I shout to the void.
Satan made them lifeless to curb his fear.
Any new living thing would make him annoyed.
Satan, the Father of the Universe
Has caused all existence to fully change
And ordered that all energy reverse
And all atoms in the world rearrange.
I’ve been thrown into the infinite deep.
My jail is a cloud of unknowing.
I am constant as I make this leap.
All that I know is where I am going.
Yes, I know that I am destined to fight
The Devil for ownership of the force
That will unify Spirit and Light
And matter into Goodness! Perforce to
Bring in a new Kingdom of Cosmic Good!
But first I must endure millennia
Of dust where once the universe stood.
This could not be stood by any!
The pain, the terror, the strife, the lies!
Horror on horror now I see his eyes!
(We see the red burning eyes and the sulphurous smoke of the special effect.)
IRINA: I think I smell sulfur! Or did you fart?
TREPLEV: Satanic sulphur, yes—
IRINA: —it’s on purpose!
TREPLEV: Mom!
NINA (still on stage): The Devil is bored with his playthings!
POLINA: Doctor, keep your hat on or you’ll get sick.
IRINA: It’s right to doff your cap to the Devil!
Father of the Universe and whatnot.
TREPLEV: Alright, fuck it! Bring down the curtain!
IRINA: Come on, Treplev, don’t be such a baby.
TREPLEV: Finita la commedia, damn it!
Bring down the goddam curtain! Yakov!
(Stepping onstage.)
I’m sorry to you all for my mistake!
One must be a member of the elect
To write for the stage of the privileged!
One must have a degree from the right school!
One must look good in clothes, have a trust fund,
Have cultivated eccentricities!
I’ve stepped un-cleansed onto holy ground!
The truth is, what I mean is—Oh, fuck it!
(Exits behind curtain.)
IRINA: I don’t understand what his problem is.
SORIN: Irina, you shouldn’t crush his ego.
IRINA: Who, me?! I’ve just tried to stay entertained.
SORIN: You made him look bad in front of his girl.
IRINA: He said himself it wasn’t serious. So I took it as a joke—
SORIN: —still and all.
IRINA: I was meant to take this seriously?!
This was meant to be a great masterwork?
He actually thought this was for real?
“Faux” real is more like it. This was a joke!
He started a play with a monologue
Then lit a stink bomb? What was that about?
Good theatre should teach and entertain.
Well, I learned nothing from this and it sucked.
This is what he thinks good plays should be like?
This is not a play people would act in.
It was all funny when he was a kid.
Now that he’s all grown up it’s just boring!
Snide comments about my artistic work—
Who could have patience with all this bullshit?
Not me. He’s a brat in a man’s body.
SORIN: You know that he wanted you to like it.
IRINA: Oh, really? Without plot, without characters?
All this entitled sophomoric blather,
Which just might have worked as a comedy?
After all of his talk of “the sublime”?
He calls a bad monologue a “new form”?
None of this is new, it’s just new to him.
TRIGORIN: Ev’ry writer dreams of writing great works.
They’re lucky if something they write just works.
IRINA: He can write what works or what doesn’t work.
I just want to be left out of it all!
DORN: Zeus, King of the Gods, you are angered!
IRINA: I’m not Zeus. I’m a woman, for fucksake.
And I’m not “angered,” I’m just pissed off.
I’m bothered that this young idiot
Is wasting his time trying to get smart.
And I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings.
MEDVED: There is no way to prove a distinction
Between the soul and physical matter.
What if the soul is made up of atoms?
Trigorin! A playwright should write a play
About people like me, about teachers,
And get it professionally produced.
It’s hard! We face so many obstacles.
IRINA: Maybe. But please no more talk about plays
And nothing more about souls or atoms.
It’s a beautiful night. Do you hear that?
(From far off across the lake, we hear a beautiful opera SOPRANO sing.)
SOPRANO (sings offstage): Les ouiseaux dans las charmille
Dans les cieux l’astre du jour
Tout parle à la jeune fille d’amour.
Scan the above with your mobile device for multimedia accompaniment by soprano Kate Fruchterman, as sound engineered by Phil Kadet to sound as if it is being heard from across a Russian lake.
MASHA: It’s so beautiful!
SOPRANO (sings offstage): Ah! Voilà la chanson gentille
La chanson d’Olympia! Ah!
TRIGORIN: She’s on the opposite shore of the lake . . .
IRINA: Come and sit down with me here, Trigorin.
This lake was magic a decade ago.
The houses around the shore threw parties,
Concerts, salons, spectacles, all the time.
You could sit here and hear music most nights
And gunfire from hunting and from high spirits.
People would cast for fish in the daytime
And cast for lovers in the night time!
What a scene! And the prince of the whole thing,
Our matinee idol and heart-throb
I shit you not it was our own Doctor Dorn.
Attractive even in our latter day,
Back then? He drove us absolutely wild.
Ugh. I can’t enjoy my memories for guilt,
I think I have made my little boy cry.
Constantine! My little Treplev! Come back!
MASHA: I’ll find him for you.
IRINA: Oh, thank you darling.
MASHA (exiting): Here, boy! Oh! I mean Constantine! Treplev!
TRIGORIN: What’s going on with the curtain up there?
NINA (finding the slit in the curtain, stepping through it, and descending to the ground in front of the stage): I don’t think we are going to finish?
And those footlights are blinding.
Here I come!
Hello, ev’ryone! I’m pleased to meet you!
IRINA: Let me kiss you. You were amazing, dear!
SORIN (as IRINA is speaking): Brava! Brava!
IRINA (continues): Yes! Brava! And absolutely gorgeous.
Your little figure is just so perfect.
You’re so stunning. And your voice is perfect.
It’s cruel to keep you in the hinterlands.
I imagine you even have talent.
I don’t need tea leaves to tell your future!
You must go on the professional stage.
NINA: The thing I most want! My constant daydream.
But it would never do. I can’t do it.
IRINA: Never say never! It helps to have friends.
You have me. And if you will allow me to—
Je vous présente mon cher romancier,
Mr. Boris Alekseevich Trigorin—
NINA: Ro-man-see-ay-
IRINA: It means “novelist,” dear.
NINA: It’s such a privil—honor! I’ve read all . . .
IRINA: No need to be frightened. Yes, he’s famous—
Prizes, translations, awards, fellowships—
And bestseller after bestseller, too,
But he’s very down to earth, even shy.
DORN: That curtain’s very pale. Could we lift it?
This whole scene is giving me the willies.
SHAMREYEV: Pull up the damn curtain, will you? Yakov!
NINA: Oh, the burning red eyes have all gone out—
That was such an odd kind of performance.
Didn’t you think so, Mr. Trigorin?
TRIGORIN: Yes. I couldn’t make head or tail of what
It meant but I liked watching it. You were sincere.
And the natural scene is so pretty.
I bet the water here is full of fishes!
NINA: Yes, I’m sure, I’m sure!—
TRIGORIN: —I love to fish.
The stillness and the meditative calm
Of watching a bobber float on the lake.
NINA: I’d always thought that creative genius
Could only feel pleasure from creating
Because of the sublime—
IRINA: —don’t say such things!
Terms like “the transcendent” and “the sublime”
Just confuse him. He doesn’t understand
And is left gasping for something to say.
SHAMREYEV: I was in the house when a great opera
Singer sang this incredibly low note.
One of the guys from our church choir was there.
And we heard a voice sing from the nosebleed
Seats, “Way to go! Bravo!” on a note
That was an octave below what the star
Had sung! An embarrassed silence ensued!
(An awkward pause.)
DORN: Someone just walked over all of our graves.
NINA: OK, I’ve gotta go! Goodbye, you all!
IRINA: No, wait! Why go so soon? We all insist.
NINA: I have a curfew. My father insists.
IRINA: Then what an old-fashioned tyrant he is!
But if there’s no way around it, oh, well!
NINA: I promise it is difficult to leave.
IRINA: We’ll get you an escort to keep you safe.
NINA: Oh, Christ! No!
SORIN: —we really want you to stay!
NINA: Dear old Sorin, I can’t stay! I must go.
SORIN: How about just a little while? Why not?
NINA (rushing off): No, I really can’t!
IRINA: —I’m so sad for her.
I heard that her father wrote a new will
Leaving everything to her stepmom
Who she doesn’t get along with so she’s screwed.
When the old rat dies, she’ll become homeless.
DORN: I’d call her dad an ass except he’s smart
So instead I’ll have to say he’s a pig.
SORIN: It does feel wet out here. Let’s go inside. (Rising.)
Ouch! It’s giving me a cramp in my legs.
IRINA: Ah! You should cut them off and replace them
With wood for all the good they do you!
Come on, my darling antique invalid.
SHAMREYEV (to POLINA): Please let me escort you, my darling wife.
POLINA: Oh, OK—
(We hear barking in the distance quickly followed by:)
SORIN: —It’s that damn dog barking again!
Shamreyev, go tell them to unchain it.
SHAMREYEV: Sorin, Peter Nicholayvich, I can’t.
The millet is in the barn for grinding.
We can’t leave it open to burglary.
(obvi to MEDVED) Really, Medved, it was a lower note!
“Way to go!” Ha! “Bravo!” A whole octave.
Just a regular guy from our church choir!
(All are leaving, except DORN.)
DORN: I don’t have any training in critique.
And I’ve seen some theater but not a lot.
Some? And maybe I’m off base to say it.
It’s just that the performance really
Worked for me. I got something out of it.
Such a young person going on and on
About such grand feelings of sadness,
About such grand ideas about time.
And the Devil’s eyes were such a climax
That it gave me goosebumps. I was tremb’ling.
I felt like I was part of something new,
Something original, raw, and vital.
Oh, look! I see the playwright coming.
I want to tell him all of these good things.
TREPLEV (entering): So the house is empty? Ev’ryone’s gone?
DORN: Ev-er-y-one except your biggest fan!
TREPLEV: I’m tired. But Masha won’t stop chasing me.
DORN: Constantine Gavrielovich Treplev!
Your play really moved me. It was so good!
It was intense. It was unique and so
You could call it weird or original
Because really it was both of those things.
Weird and original are the same thing.
One or the other is used to denote
How comfortable one is with the new thing.
Listen: talent is doing something well
That has already been defined for you.
I cure folks. I’m a “talented” doctor.
Genius is doing something never seen,
That’s never been seen in the world before!
You brought down the curtain before the end
Of your show, but I wanted to see it!
You have to do more shows. You have genius!
(TREPLEV hugs him.) No need to hug me back. All this is true.
You made a play that meant something diff’rent.
For everyone in the audience.
You made them think. And that’s what’s important.
Only art that is sincere can be great.
Oh, dear! You look like you’re going to faint.
TREPLEV: You think I should keep making more—
DORN: —I do.
And you must never compromise your soul.
Always make plays about important things.
The things that must be said and will endure.
I have no regrets. My life has been great.
Or comfortable enough that I don’t care.
And yet if I had been given one ounce
Of genius, one moment of creating something new,
I think that I would have felt ecstasy
Beyond what angels or even God feel!
TREPLEV: Hey, have you seen Nina?
DORN: —Yes, beyond God!
Art has got to be about ideas!
You have to write with a definite plan.
If you don’t have a goal you will founder.
You’ll be lost. Even genius won’t save you.
TREPLEV: But have you seen Nina?!
DORN: —She went back home.
TREPLEV: Oh, man. Oh, man— I’ve got to go see her.
DORN: You should get some rest. That’s doctor’s orders.
Oh, here’s Mash—
(MASHA has entered.)
TREPLEV: —Ah! I am compelled to go!
MASHA: Kiddo, come on inside. Your mom is there.
She’s waiting up and she keeps telling us
How concerned she is about your welfare.
TREPLEV: Just say you couldn’t find me or I’ve left.
And stop hunting for me. Leave me in peace!
DORN: Don’t be like that. Take some time to calm down.
Don’t cry. Come inside—
TREPLEV: —Doctor, I must go.
(Leaves quickly as:)
DORN: The young. Oh, my. Who can get in their way?
MASHA: “The young!” What old people always lament
When nothing better comes to mind. Sn-ort! (She has snorted snuff.)
DORN: Give me that. (Takes her snuff box.)
That does not look good on you.
Better let it stay out there with the frogs.
(He has tossed her snuff box into the woods as, from inside, we hear the others distantly around the piano singing The Band Played On from 1895. I imagine IRINA is singing and playing as the rest sing chorus.)
Scan the above with your mobile device for multimedia accompaniment.
Hey, they’re playing music inside. Let’s go.
MASHA: I want to talk to you about something.
I don’t like my father, can’t talk to him.
I kind of like you, and you’re a doctor.
You’ll keep my secret and maybe help me—
And I need help badly or I will fuck
Up my life so badly it will never
Get un-fucked. It has to stop, it has to!
DORN: What’s bothering you and how can I help?
MASHA: I’m pathetic! Totally mis’rable.
There isn’t anyone who understands.
No one suspects how wrecked I am inside.
I am completely in love with that guy!
DORN: Treplev? Oh, ev’ryone is so upset!
All crying and pining for each other!
It’s like the damp night air is full of love!
The lake is casting its deep enchantment!
Passion has hooked them like fish on a line.
How can I help you, dear girl. Spit it out.
(END ACT ONE.)
