Word: playwrighting
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...October 17th, 1896, when the first production of The Seagull opened in the State Theater of St. Petersburg, it was a resounding disaster. The play was poorly understood by its actors and poorly acted. Hissed down by the audience, it was dismissed by critics as inept and absurd Playwright Anton Chekhov, confounded by the disaster, left the theater after the second act, vowing never to write a play again...
Luckily, one member of the audience saw potential in the play, and mounted a second production. Critic-playwright Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko was at that time organizing the Moscow Art Theater with a partner and talked Chekhov into giving The Seagull a second chance. Their 1898 production of the play proved an enormous critical and commercial success, and led to the collaboration that established the Art Theater as one of the most prestigious in the world. It also inspired Chekhov to write his three greatest dramatic masterpieces. Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard...
...many plays such an inversion would undoubtedly prove disastrous, but in this case it not only matches Chekhov's mood and theme, but carries the playwright's own actions one step further. Chekhov boils the play's plot down to a bare minimum; Rauch abandons the scenery as well. We are left with the bare essence: a group of men and women struggling vainly to communicate with each other and to cope with their loves, their art, and their lives...
...title suggests, the play does horritage to one of the playwright's fascinations--time. The theory of time presented in the play belongs to philosopher J. W. Dunne who, according to Priestly, oposits that each person is "a series of observers in a corresponding series of times." Ordinarily, people can only perceive the present, through the eyes of their mortal identity. But occasionally humans transcend this limitation. Thus when we see the future in dreams, we are looking through the eyes of an observer in some future time. Similarly, within the play, one of the characters is treated...
...text is sometimes like shifting snow, DeMunn's and Patterson's acting skills are rock-solid. Credit Playwright Meyers with braving a skyhold on verities more elevated than Broadway's passing parade of frivolity...