The Seagull by Anton Chekov

Adapted by Simon Stephens, directed by Kristine Landon-Smith

Oxford School of Drama 2021

Photos by Geraint Lewis

I was delighted this year to work on The Seagull, Chekhov’s celebrated masterpiece for the post graduate students at Oxford School of Drama. The play documents the human condition where frailty, unrequited love, hope and expectation are all under the microscope in the stunning adaptation of Chekhov’s text by Simon Stephens.

Stephen’s text, which is written in a contemporary vernacular, allowed us to frame the work in such a way that we could not only present the play but we could also engage the audience in the process that we went through in interrogating the text. So audiences witnessed the actors as characters in the work but also experienced actors “at work”, in rehearsal clothes and investigating how to bring a text to life, how to come together as an ensemble and how to tell a story with minimal props and mis en scene . Occasionally the audience’s attention was drawn to actors on the side-lines watching with interest, waiting for their entrance. Nothing was hidden. This stripped back approach allowed the immediacy and intimacy of Chekhov’s intentions to shine through and placed the actor and their power of story telling at the centre.

In conceiving this idea where the audience is let in on the process as well as the finished product I was particularly inspired by the film Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street by Louis Malle which is a film about a company of actors under the direction of Andre Gregory rehearsing Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a disused theatre in New York’s 42nd Street over a period of months. Towards the end of those rehearsals the director allowed a small audience in to eavesdrop on their work in process and this is what Louis Malle then turned as a film. The other “rehearsal” film that made a huge impact on me and provided a guiding light in our endeavour was Carlos’ Saura Carmen where again the work is played out at the same time as the life of the actor’s performing the work is exposed.