Undertones

I’ve spent some time today with the text of “The Art of Cruelty” trying to define, once and for all, just what I mean when I talk about “undertones” in Chekhov. I’ve tried to explain it, repeatedly, in rehearsal, or casual conversation…Nobody knows what I mean.

Many years ago, when I attempted my own version of “Three Sisters” here (a play called “NostalgHia”), the show never took place. Six months of work and no performance. At the time, the shutting down of a show the evening of the opening night felt like death. I mourned that show for months; it almost put me in the hospital (ER to be more exact…but that’s a story for another time); it severed, for a while, connections with people I had been extremely close to for years.

Now, in retrospect, I think that somebody was watching out for me. I couldn’t have attempted another Chekhov after that Chekhov and, at the time, I didn't realize the importance of undertones.

So what exactly are they? It’s still very, very difficult to explain to the modern actor (particularly the modern Western actor – yes, geography matters). It’s not just repression. It’s not just a sense of propriety pushed beyond the bearable. It’s not just unhappiness. It’s a combination of all three with an added touch of guilt for desiring (things, people…mostly people) one learns one shouldn’t have.

There is a moment in fin de siècle theatre (not just Chekhov -- Ibsen and Strindberg too) when women feel shame for desiring. What do they want? What we all want but are too polite to admit: colossal love affairs without an expiration date; travel ("only travel with people you love") to faraway places whose landscapes and cultural protocols provide additional pleasure; professions that allow for unrestricted use of intelligence; no age restrictions of any kind.

You see the problem with explaining this to 20-year-olds fresh out of school, ready to tackle the old masters…The young feel no need to apologize. But Chekhov’s women are no longer young. They’re worn by their menial jobs, or their tedious marriages, or their frustrating years of spinsterhood, or the town’s expectations, or plain old age. By the time they walk into the world set up by Chekhov’s stage, their time is already up. They wake up one morning to discover that they have “expired” like an old can of pineapple. The problem is that their souls (often their bodies) have not (expired). They rebel internally (rebellions completely invisible to the naked eye), and rage against the world…while on the outside, all the others see are polite women pouring a cup of tea for their(disinterested) male visitors, and talking about the weather. That’s the undertone: repression, desire, tragedy – all mastered completely while talking about things of an “appropriate” nature like the price of oranges, or school work (many of Chekhov’s women are teachers), or rain boots, or the latest pamphlet.

No tragedies in tea cups, theirs. Massive internal storms that sink all ships.

Those undertones. How do I explain them to the next generation of twenty somethings ready to take the stage? It’s not that they don’t understand loss (I choose my casts carefully), it’s that there is a certain brand of regret that no one of that age has experienced. And if they’re really lucky (geography, expectations), perhaps they never will.

I'm outvocabularied, Mr. Chekhov. Once again, you win. But not for long, I hope, because what I cannot put into words, I find in images. Tenderness and violence and affection and regret. Desire. That’s what Chekhov’s women are all about. That’s what they’d rather die than confess to. That’s what I need to show. That is what I want.

(A note: I collect songs and images when I think about a play -- a mood file of sorts. Later I regret not tracing the source of the image, the artist. Some of these are nameless, unattributed images. They are not mine, and I never use them other than to exemplify a mood)