The Seagull Stage Edition Series

“Senelick’s accomplishment is astounding.”—Library Journal Anton Chekhov is a unique force in modern drama, his works cherished for their brilliant wit and insight into the human condition. In this stunning new translation of one of Chekhov’s most popular and beloved plays, Laurence Senelick presents a fresh perspective on the master playwright and his groundbreaking dramas. He brings this timeless trial of art and love to life as memorable characters have clashing desires and lose balance in the shifting eruptions of society and a modernizing Russia. Supplementing the play is an account of Chekhov’s life; a note on the translation; an introduction to the work; and variant lines, often removed due to government censorship, which illuminate the context in which they were written. This edition is the perfect guide to enriching our understanding of this great dramatist or to staging a production.

"Senelick's accomplishment is astounding."--Library Journal

“Senelick’s accomplishment is astounding.”—Library Journal Anton Chekhov is a unique force in modern drama, his works cherished for their brilliant wit and insight into the human condition. In this stunning new translation of one of Chekhov’s most popular and beloved plays, Laurence Senelick presents a fresh perspective on the master playwright and his groundbreaking dramas. He brings this timeless trial of art and love to life as memorable characters have clashing desires and lose balance in the shifting eruptions of society and a modernizing Russia. Supplementing the play is an account of Chekhov’s life; a note on the translation; an introduction to the work; and variant lines, often removed due to government censorship, which illuminate the context in which they were written. This edition is the perfect guide to enriching our understanding of this great dramatist or to staging a production.

“Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English.” —James Wood, New Yorker The Seagull, in this new translation for TCG’s Russian Drama Series, includes lines and variants found in Chekhov’s final version of the play, but omitted from the script for the original performance at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898, which went on to become the standard printed version. The restored text, a product of the continuing collaboration of playwright Richard Nelson and translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, provides valuable insight into Chekhov’s intentions in his groundbreaking play. Richard Nelson’s many plays include The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country (That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, Sorry, Regular Singing); The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family (Hungry, What Did You Expect?, Women of a Certain Age); Nikolai and the Others; Goodnight Children Everywhere (Olivier Award for Best Play); Franny’s Way; Some Americans Abroad; Frank’s Home; Two Shakespearean Actors and James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey; Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical). Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated the works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Boris Pasternak and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their translations of The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina won the PEN Translation Prize in 1991 and 2002, respectively. Pevear, a native of Boston, and Volokhonsky, of St. Petersburg, are married and live in France.

The Seagull Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - The best-selling official for Novel that everybody is looking for. The Seagull is a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, authored within 1895 as well as created in 1896. The Seagull is usually regarded as the first of his 4 major plays. It dramatizes the artistic and romantic conflicts between 4 characters: the popular middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, as well as the son of her the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplyov.Though the character of Trigorin is regarded as Chekhov's best male role as Chekhov's other full-length plays, The Seagull is based in an ensemble cast of varied, completely developed characters. In distinctions to the melodrama of mainstream 19th-century theatre, lurid steps (such as Konstantin's suicide attempts) aren't shown onstage. Characters tend to talk in tactics that skirt around problems instead of addressing them directly; quite simply, their lines are full of what's known in remarkable practice as subtext.The opening night of the very first creation was a popular failure. Vera Komissarzhevskaya, taking part in Nina, was so unnerved through the hostility of this market that she lost voice. The audience was left by Chekhov and spent the previous 2 actions behind the scenes. When supporters published to him the generation, later on, grew to become successful, he assumed that these were simply attempting to be sort. When Konstantin Stanislavski, the seminal Russian theatre professional of the moment, directed it inside 1898 for the Moscow Art Theatre of his, the play would have been a triumph. Stanislavski's creation became "one of probably the greatest incidents in the record of Russian theatre and among probably the greatest brand new advancements in the history of planet drama".Stanislavski's The Seagull was caused by direction to be perceived as a tragedy via overzealousness with the idea of subtext, while Chekhov intended it to become a comedy.

“We need the theatre, couldn’t, couldn’t do without it. Could we?” A successful actress visits her brother’s isolated estate far from the city, throwing the frustrated residents unfulfilled ambitions into sharp relief. As her son attempts to impress with a self-penned play, putting much more than his pride at stake, others dream of fame, love and the ability to change their past. Chekhov’s darkly comic masterpiece is reignited for the 21st century by one of the most exciting new voices in British Theatre, Anya Reiss, Winner of the Most Promising Playwright at both the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle awards.

“Senelick’s accomplishment is astounding.”—Library Journal Anton Chekhov is a unique force in modern drama, his works cherished for their brilliant wit and insight into the human condition. In this stunning new translation of one of Chekhov’s most popular and beloved plays, Laurence Senelick presents a fresh perspective on the master playwright and his groundbreaking dramas. He brings this timeless trial of art and love to life as memorable characters have clashing desires and lose balance in the shifting eruptions of society and a modernizing Russia. Supplementing the play is an account of Chekhov’s life; a note on the translation; an introduction to the work; and variant lines, often removed due to government censorship, which illuminate the context in which they were written. This edition is the perfect guide to enriching our understanding of this great dramatist or to staging a production.

While the influence of Chekhov in modern theater worldwide, and especially in America, has been immense, translations into English have tended to be too literary and have not communicated the full emotional power and precise attention to detail of Chekhov's Russian. Milton Ehre began translating Chekhov's plays to provide professional theaters with performance texts that capture the feel and rhythms of spoken, rather than written, language. Chekhov for the Stage is the first publication of his revised versions of The Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, and The Sea Gull. Ehre's sensitive renderings of these classics make this volume the translation of choice for performers and directors, teachers, and the general reading public.