Examine Anton Chekhov's rebellion against the theatrical conventions of his day, as voiced in his play The Seagull
Learn from theatrical producer and designer Norris Houghton about Anton Chekhov's rebellion against the conventions of late 19th-century Russian drama, especially as voiced by a character in his play The Seagull. This Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation film was made in 1968.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Learn about Herman Melville's classic short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” from writer and editor Charles Van Doren in a 1969 film production of Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.
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Transcript
NORRIS HOUGHTON: Chekhov, you must know, was not a political revolutionary, but he was an artistic one. In another play, "The Seagull," one of his characters delivers a fine rebellious speech, which was, in fact, Chekhov's own battle cry.
TREPLEV: In my opinion, the modern theater is nothing but tradition and conventionality. When the curtain rises and these great geniuses--these devotees of holy art--try to represent how people eat, drink, move about, and wear their jackets, when from the most commonplace sentences and cliches they try to draw a moral--a petty moral convenient for domestic usage--I run away. I am weighed down with its vulgarity. We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can't have them we'd better have nothing!
NORRIS HOUGHTON: Now, what new forms of expression did Chekhov introduce to the theater? For one thing, he wrote about the life he knew well. Not life as he would have liked it to be, but as it was.
[Music in]
It was a world going to pieces around him--the world of the Russian countryside. A way of life was coming to an end. The serfs--once virtually slaves--had been freed in the early 1860s. A generation later, and the large estates were being broken up. Their owners--born to wealth and privilege--could not adapt themselves to new conditions. Victims of greed, ignorance, indolence, they simply allowed life to sweep by them and seemed unable, most of them, to catch up. And yet Chekhov did not judge these people, he did not criticize. His aim was simple:
[Music out]
ANTON CHEKHOV: I will describe life to you truthfully, and you will see in it what you have not seen before--its divergence from the norm, its contradictions.
TREPLEV: In my opinion, the modern theater is nothing but tradition and conventionality. When the curtain rises and these great geniuses--these devotees of holy art--try to represent how people eat, drink, move about, and wear their jackets, when from the most commonplace sentences and cliches they try to draw a moral--a petty moral convenient for domestic usage--I run away. I am weighed down with its vulgarity. We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can't have them we'd better have nothing!
NORRIS HOUGHTON: Now, what new forms of expression did Chekhov introduce to the theater? For one thing, he wrote about the life he knew well. Not life as he would have liked it to be, but as it was.
[Music in]
It was a world going to pieces around him--the world of the Russian countryside. A way of life was coming to an end. The serfs--once virtually slaves--had been freed in the early 1860s. A generation later, and the large estates were being broken up. Their owners--born to wealth and privilege--could not adapt themselves to new conditions. Victims of greed, ignorance, indolence, they simply allowed life to sweep by them and seemed unable, most of them, to catch up. And yet Chekhov did not judge these people, he did not criticize. His aim was simple:
[Music out]
ANTON CHEKHOV: I will describe life to you truthfully, and you will see in it what you have not seen before--its divergence from the norm, its contradictions.