The creative team began working on this production a little more than a year ago. In my role as production dramaturg, I was happy to create a website of resources first for the creative team, and then when we went into rehearsals, for the cast. And now that we are opening the show, the resources offer valuable perspectives to our audiences as well.
After months of rehearsing on a taped cement floor with acting blocks in place of benches and frames in place of doors, the company finally moves to the theatre space, to a stage with levels and furniture, working doors and chairs out in the audience. The beloved cherry orchard feels so much more real now.
Near the end of his life, Anton Chekhov who had suffered from tuberculosis and depression throughout his life, decided to move to the seaside town of Yalta in order to heal. On January 18, 1904, he wrote to his wife, the actress Olga Knipper, “I’m writing The Cherry Orchard very slowly. Sometimes I feel it’s a success, sometimes a failure…It’s all very ordinary, but that’s how things are, unfortunately.”