Regrets Loss and Facing Ourselves

Lev Dodin, the director of the acclaimed Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg Russia, has directed a riveting production of UNCLE VANYA, which was recently seen at BAM.  Like Ingmar Bergman at his best, Dodin begins the play as well as foreshadows the outcome in the opening few moments. He has also reflected on the play and Chekhov in the playbill.  Here are his thoughts:

Life flows by, and sooner or later a man begins to see his years lived as a treasure he didn’t manage to put to good use.  He starts to see visions of other possible but unlived lives.  In these other lives all his secret dreams come true, all his hopes are fulfilled, all his sweetest fantasies become real.  The man furiously burns up the past, denies the present, and gives himself complete to this other life, which he could have lived, but did not manage to.  The fuller the man understands life, the sharper he feels this gap, this contradiction that grows into a tragedy.  Time goes by, and gradually you are faced with a choice — to either refuse this life completely, or to find courage to live out the life given to you by g-d and fate, which you have been carrying out — alone — with your will power and personality.

Fatally ill doctor Chekhov knew this paradox only too well, and he analyzed it with amazing tenderness and desperate ruthlessness.  This, among many other things, defines Chekhov’s plays, and the most beautiful of them — UNCLE VANYA — carries a simple but eternal melody and themes.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>