The Italian for Window

Teaching Chekhov/Stanislavski at Brookline Adult Ed has forced me to revisit the works of both these men and I have tried to do so with "beginner's mind". I have found that Stanislavski has very little to do with "Method Acting" to the point where I consider "The Method" at worst a corruption and at best an entirely different technique. Method seems to go after emotions, grab them by the throat and shake them till they give over their secrets.

Stanislavski is more subtle -- focusing on one's tasks, on one's goals, the emotions are ignored until, like cats, they come to demand attention. I agree with his opinion that emotions and other elements of the psyche belong to the subconscious and cannot be controlled or forced. They must be wooed. I had a friend in college who was convinced that Chekhov was a comedy writer. There is a key moment in Chekhov's Three Sisters when Irina, the youngest, starts running around screaming "I've forgotten the Italian for window!"

"How can you take that seriously?" she asked me. I already had an issue with Three Sisters, finding the main characters rather whiney, and I readily agreed with her. Chekhov, played for laughs. I had no idea how to deal with this character, who seemed to enjoy a lot of advantages but somehow treated life like a huge crisis.

There was also my other, rather pompous friend who said with great authority, "It's not about three women who don't go to Moscow, it's about three women who fight like hell to get there."

He was quoting someone, I forget who. And I think he was mistaken about what the play means, but more on that later.

Returning to the texts after some distance has helped me understand them better. We are working with three of the plays: The Seagull, Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya. And, yes, we are doing the "I've forgotten the Italian" scene.

I understand now that my classmates were wrong -- Chekhov does not sit easily on one team or another. His works are neither deep tragedy or rollicking comedy. I think what makes them so modern, what makes them part of the foundation of modern theatre is their ambiguity. They are a series of truthful moments, some funny - some sad, like our lives. They can lead us to scorn or compassion depending on how we look at them. And, unlike Shakespeare where the characters tell the audience about themselves, these plays reveal themselves slowly. People speak indirectly and sometimes not very honestly.

Re-examining these plays I am amazed at their hold on us. I think initially a lot of us study these plays because we have to, a good theatre student knows Chekhov and Stanislavski. We frequently pretend to like them, privately wondering what makes them so great. We watch the productions with forced attention and then forget about them. I think it's because we don't really know how to study them. These plays reveal themselves slowly, you need to spend time with them. Working the scenes in class has given me a deeper perspective, as the students become more adept at creating the moment-to-moment reality of the characters. I see that what is written on the page is only a fraction of the communication between them.

For example, in one of our Uncle Vanya scenes, when Vanya took Yelena's hand, our Yelena said, "You're disgusting" - which was the line - and began to giggle. This was not indicated anywhere in the script but rang perfectly true. It revealed Yelena's ambiguity perfectly.

The most powerful lesson I've had about Chekhov was not in a theatre or classroom at all. I was working in the corporate world at the time, as a financial advisor and I was telling a colleague about a play I had worked on. I started to tell her that a character came on from "stage left" but was suddenly unsure which side stage left was. For the record, it is the actor's left, but in that moment I felt a sudden panic, a loss of what I'd always considered an intrinsic piece of information, a part of myself.

It was the same loss that drives Irina when she can't remember her Italian vocabulary. And in my own panic I suddenly understood her, understood her battle and her frustration. I suddenly knew I could direct the play, having had a gut-level understanding of it.

Looking at the play this year, it also revealed a new meaning to me, one that has nothing to do with Moscow. Yes, the sisters all whine about Moscow. But I think the truth of the play is in Irina when she talks about a sense of benediction she feels as she sits for her teacher's exam. And at the end of the play, when her fiance (who she didn't love anyway) is dead, she says,

"Tomorrow I shall go to the school and be a teacher. I will give my life to those who need it."

The core of the play is Irina finding her mission. Who cares if she makes it to Moscow?