One of the wonderful things about being a dramaturg is discovering interesting bits of information here and there about the play and the playwright. These are often things that never make themselves visible in the production, but offer fascinating insights nonetheless. Here are ten of those interesting facts we've learned about Chekhov and The Cherry Orchard.
- It may have been inspired, at least thematically, by events in Chekhov’s life. When he was 16, his mother went into debt after being swindled by some contractors she had hired to build a house. Her former lodger offered to help her, but then he went behind her back to buy the house for himself.
- Chekhov was battling tuberculosis and most likely also clinical depression while writing The Cherry Orchard, and for much of the writing period was only able to write a few lines a day.
- When Chekhov lived on a country estate in Melikhovo near Moscow, he became interested in gardening and planted a cherry orchard. After he later relocated to Yalta, a seaside city on the Crimean Peninsula, he was upset to learn that the new owner of his former estate had cut down most of his cherry orchard.
Chekhov outside the orchard in Melikhovo Photo by AntonChekhovFoundation.org - The playwright (Chekhov) and the director of the premiere production (Stanislavsky) disagreed strongly about the mood of this play. While he was working on the play, Chekhov wrote to Stanislavsky's wife and warned her, "Not a drama but a comedy has emerged from me, in places even a farce." But after reading the completed script, Stanislavsky wrote back, "This is not a comedy or a farce, as you wrote, it is a tragedy."
- As the show toured throughout Europe, some audiences questioned the moral value of the play. The post-Victorian British were leery of the play's morals, proclaiming themselves shocked by Charlotte’s questionable parentage and Lyubov’s references to her Parisian lover. Audiences rarely stayed for the third act.
- During much of the writing process of The Cherry Orchard, none of the people closest to him knew anything about the play. Even by the summer of 1902, Chekhov had not shared any details about the play with his loved ones.
- Chekhov, who had grown up attending the theatre in the small town of Taganrog where he grew up, wrote comedic short stories to pay for his years in medical school.
- The Bolsheviks interpreted the play as a harbinger of the 1917 revolution, because of Peter’s speeches (many of which were censored by the Tsarist regime for the 1904 performance).
- Chekhov’s father was a shopkeeper, and his grandfather had been a serf. He was only one year old in 1861 when Tsar Alexander II emancipated the serfs.
The Chekhov family with Anton in front in the light coat, and his mother and father directly behind him. Photo by Wikimedia Commons - George Bernard Shaw said, "Hearing Chekhov's plays make me want to tear up my own."
