vol. 3 no. 2 November, 2005 Chekhov’s masterpiece seen through the eyes of one of Europe’s greatest directors THREE SISTERS by Anton Chekhov directed by Krystian Lupa November 26 — January 1 See what’s happening at our exciting second theatre! page 5 Double Edge Theatre the UnPOSSESSED November 16-20 Commemorating th the 100 anniversary Everett Dance Theatre of Sartre’s birth Home Movies January 11-15 NO EXIT A.R.T./MXAT Institute by Mayhem Jean-Paul Sartre by Kelly Stuart December 8-10 directed by Jerry Mouawad This Is How It Goes January 7-29 by Neil LaBute December 15-17 Melancholy Play by Sarah Ruhl February 10-18 Pants on Fire created by the cast & KJ Sanchez June 2-10 VE! AYS. SUBSCRIBE NOW & SA 7.8300 CHOOSEamrep.org ANY 3 OR 617.54 MORE PL A GREAT GIFT IDEA! Gift certifcates available in any amount Gideon Lester introduces SHADOWLAND the theatre of Krystian Lupa new produc- ments and more than ten hours of stage spoke, we understood them exactly as within-the-play, but that fictional audience tion of Three time. The show was mysterious and beauti- human beings. and we, the real audience, were bound Sisters has ful, and veered in style from episodes of epic Over the ensuing years I’ve seen sever- together for the whole production, and the beenA.R.T.’s six years in the mak- actors would often turn to us at particularly ing. It was in 1999 that we charged moments and stare at us, as if to first asked the Polish say, “What do you make of all this?” The director Krystian Lupa to auditorium itself became an extension of the visit the A.R.T., with a view set, and we were acutely aware that the per- to directing his first formance existed both on the stage and in English-language produc- the theatre — the one room occupied jointly tion. That was also the by actors and audience. Lupa’s great insight year in which I first saw is that The Seagull is a meditation on the Lupa’s work; the nature of theatre itself, and the production Edinburgh International demonstrated that brilliantly. Festival was presenting Lupa has often said that he owes his his adaptation of the greatest artistic debt to the philosopher and Sleepwalkers trilogy by psychologist Carl Jung. His theatre is the Austrian novelist indeed Jungian, for Lupa’s major preoccu- Hermann Broch. pation is with the human subconscious — Even before seeing the realm of dreams, mania, magic, and Sleepwalkers, Lupa’s unspeakable terror and desire. Over the theatre was the stuff of past decade he has staged works by many legend for me. Rob authors whose work inhabits the same terri- Orchard, the A.R.T.’s tory, including Thomas Bernhard, Mikhail Executive Director, and Bulgakov, Robert Musil, and Friedrich Alvin Epstein, a member Nietzsche. It is no surprise that Lupa finds of our resident acting com- great affinity with Chekhov, perhaps the pany, had seen a produc- greatest playwright of the unconscious and tion of his in Krakow a inexpressible. Chekhov’s characters are year earlier, and both had spoken with awe theatricality in which scores of performers, al of Lupa’s productions, and now recognize famously unable to give voice to their true about the virtuosity and originality of his singing and dancing, filled the stage, to that, although he reinvents his artistic signa- feelings; as Lupa told the Three Sisters cast stagecraft. It later turned out that Robert scenes of exquisite domestic realism, often ture with each new project, the qualities that during a workshop this summer, “between Woodruff, now the A.R.T.’s Artistic Director, conducted in silence. The set, at first glance made Sleepwalkers such an unforgettable what they say and what lies inside them was also one of the very few Americans to nothing more than roughly painted walls that experience are the hallmarks of his theatre. there is an abyss.” have seen Krystian’s work — a theatre in housed ordinary doors, windows, and bed- The intricate, layered performances, the This breach between consciousness Israel had invited the two directors to stage frames all contained within a square outlined scenes of intense, concen- productions concurrently — so Lupa and the in duct tape, soon acquired a fluid, poetic trated silence, the abstract square of tape delineating the stage, the brightly-colored, deceptively simple sets of walls, windows, and doors — all these are common to Krystian’s work, and yet they barely begin to describe the experience of watching — I’d rather say of living through — one of his productions. For Krystian is a profoundly spiri- tual, philosophical director, and his theatre is effectively a laboratory in which he and his audience scrutinize aspects of the human psyche. The audience is a vital part of this process, indeed Lupa often insists on our mental and emotional participation by having his actors address us directly. His recent produc- A.R.T. have been traveling in the same orbit quality, as if the spaces they described were tion of Chekhov’s Seagull for more than a decade. not literal rooms, but representations of the opened with a row of empty Sleepwalkers was unlike anything I’d characters’ interior landscapes. And what chairs facing away from us at ever encountered in the theatre. The pro- characters! The actors created performanc- the edge of the stage; they duction was in every sense vast, its enor- es of such nuance and complexity that it were filled slowly by the char- mous narrative unfolding in three install- hardly mattered they were speaking Polish; acters who had come to see though we couldn’t understand a word they Konstantin Treplev’s play- 2 ARTicles and articulation can be powerfully theatrical. fine example; the Prozorovs’ house at first Lupa’s characters often live in silence seems “true to life,” but grows more and THREE SISTERS at a glance because words fail them, more unrealistic to by Anton Chekhov translated by Paul Schmidt and these silent scenes reflect the sisters’ directed by Krystian Lupa are among the most interior state. Along set design Krystian Lupa extraordinary sequences with many of Lupas’s assistant director and in his productions. Two rooms, the Prozorov costume design Piotr Skiba lighting design Scott Zielinski years ago I saw his dwelling also contains original music Jacek Ostaszewski adaptation of Bulgakov’s shadows of its former sound design David Remedios allegorical masterpiece occupants. “A house The Master and always retains ele- CAST Andrei Prozorov Sean Dugan* Margarita, in which the ments of its own his- Olga Kelly McAndrews* Devil visits Moscow in tory, remnants of the his sisters Masha Molly Ward* the guise of the magician life of its previous [ Irina Sarah Grace Wilson* Natasha, his fiancée, later his wife Julienne Hanzelka Kim* Woland, who begins his owners,” he says. Kulygin, Mashas’ husband, reign of chaos by occu- Lupa cites another a high school teacher Will LeBow* pying a theatre and stag- major influence, the Vershinin, colonel battery commander Frank Wood* Baron Tuzenbach, first lieutenant Jeff Biehl* ing a macabre cabaret. Austrian poet Rainer Solyony, captain Chris McKinney* The evening before the Maria Rilke, who Chebutykin, army doctor Thomas Derrah* Fedotik, second lieutenant Patrick Mapel performance the theatre manager is at noted that while walking through a city, Rohde, second lieutenant Sean Simbro home, and finds himself seized with an traces of former buildings and lives Ferapont, janitor at the county Counsel Jeremy Geidt* inchoate, prescient terror of what is to follow. remained visible — a bricked-in window, the Anfisa, the nurse TBA Lupa staged the scene by placing the man- footprint of a house destroyed by fire, the SYNOPSIS ager at one end of a dining table, in a room shape of a staircase on a half-demolished “Let’s pack our bags and go to Moscow; there’s no place like Moscow,” pleads Irina, the youngest sister. Her cry wall. echoes throughout Anton Chekhov’s play, a mantra for the entire Prozorov family. Stuck in a small town in provin- More than cial Russia, spinster schoolmistress Olga, unhappily married Masha, idealistic Irina, and Andrei, the failed six years after scientist, yearn for better days. The Prozorovs long for love and happiness, their only companions the soldiers seeing stationed in the local garrison, a group of would-be poets and philosophers. The family, forever aware of a better future just beyond reach, faces marriage, birth, and death alike, constantly searching for answers to why we keep Sleepwalkers, on living. *member of Actors’ Equity it’s extraordi- nary to think that Krystian Lupa is about to open a produc- Who is Krystian Lupa? tion at the Allen Kuharski introduces A.R.T. The journey has the director of Three Sisters presented both and puts him in the context of him and us with great chal- contemporary Polish theatre. lenges — in Poland, for Visit amrep.org enclosed by his signature walls, windows, example, Krystian can effectively rehearse a and doors, beyond which Woland and his production indefinitely, opening it only when for the complete article supernatural retinue crouched and watched, he feels ready. In the case of his major silent and unnoticed. The manager’s wife adaptations, this often takes more than a entered with a tureen of soup, which she year. We’ve managed to provide Krystian served her husband. For five minutes we with ten weeks in which to rehearse Three watched him eat, and although man and Sisters — double the time we usually give a wife never spoke, it was as if we occupied production and a great financial investment space inside their minds, so clearly could we for an American theatre, but a very short read their thoughts.