Murray Ross

Dear Writer. . Dear Actress . . Dear Doggie

 

The letters Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper wrote to each other from 1899-1904 are charming, passionate, playful--- portraits of a great writer and a great actress who happened to be in love with each other and were almost always far apart. They met at rehearsals of Chekhov's new play, The Seagull, where she was having a great time playing "that stingy actress,"  Arkadina.

 
She remained acting in Moscow, he was in  warm Yalta, writing the plays she would act in.

 

Kevin Landis and Julie Sweum will be reading some of the best of these letters this weekend in the Osborne Theatre, and it's a treat for anyone who cares about theatre, and about love.  You'll get to know these two attractive, and very real people in a most engaging and personal way, following their relationship[ from courtship, through marriage, to Anton's death in 1904. He was 44.  Olga lived on for another 55 years--she never remarried.  You can hardly spend a better hour in the advent of spring.

Dear Writer....Dear Actress...Dear Doggie 

Five readings: April 28, 29, and 30 at 8:00 p.m., April 29 at 2:30 p.m, and Sunday, May 1, at 4:30 p.m..Seating is limited to 50 people, so reservations are essential.  All tickets $10.  All seating is general admission.

Click here to purchase tickets.

Anton Chekhov, OK!

We opened The Seagull last night with no idea what to expect. Would anyone laugh watching a play where people go around talking about how miserable they are, and which ends disasterously?  Yes, as it turns out, and often.  Perhaps everyone left the show feeling depressed- -that's rumored to be the usual Chekhov experience. People tend to grit their teeth before slogging into the theater for Chekhov, and this may explain why Chekhov is so rarely done out here in the west -- we like our theatre bouncy, and corny and just as high elephant's eye.  OK!  This is why I am now bursting into song, so you will get in the proper mood, not depressing at all.  The opposite of depressing. Come on, now, everyone, sing!

    Anton Chekhov!  Where the tears come blowin' with the rain

    Where the grown ups sigh, the lovers cry,

    And the laughs come right before the pain.

    Anton Chekhov! Ev'ry night my honey lamb and I

    Sit alone and talk and watch 'em squawk

   Makin' lazy circles in the rye.

 

    We know we are trapped on the land,

    And the land we belong to is bland,

    And when we say Yeeeow! Aipeoeeay!

    We're only sayin'

    You're doing fine, Anton Chekhov,

    Anton Chekhov, OK!

You can sing along here, and in costumes which look quite a bit like our Seagull's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpG4rEI16aA

And you might as well come along and see our show too.  Trust me, it's the opposite of boring. There is something worth paying attention to every single second.  There's hardly a laugh with out a tear, hardly a tear without a laugh. As a gentleman not of my acquaintance said to me after the show last night, you have the tragedy, and you have the comedy, and you can't let go of either of them.  There you have it.  You're doing fine, Anton Chekhov, OK!

 

 

 

Hatching the Bird

 
Back in 1898, the newly formed Moscow Art Theatre gathered to read a new play that would be the last production of their first season.  This occasion has been preserved by a wonderful posed photograph:

 

The playwright, Anton Chekhov, is at the center, reading from his play, The Seagull, surrounded by the listening cast. Sitting to Chekhov's right is Konstantin Stanislavski, the theatre's stage director who would also play the writer Trigorin in the Moscow production.To his right, standing, is Olga Knipper, the young actress who would take a leading role in the play, then become Chekhov's girlfriend, and later, his wife.  The other actors present are a team of Russian all stars, the core group of the most influential ensemble theater of modern times.

In March of 2011, a cast gathered at THEATREWORKS for a first reading of the last play of our current season.  The playwright wasn't present. As usual at THEATREWORKS, Shakespeare hovered over everything. Shakespeare hovers over The Seagull too-- the play is Chekhov's variation of Hamlet). Our occasion was a less formal one, and the photographs, taken by Steve Wallace, were not posed. We had more food.  I especially like how the script is right next to a jar of mixed nuts, which pretty well describes both our cast and Chekhov's characters.

 

 

Very soon we're stumbling on our feet, beginning to map the play--and almost immediately you can feel the mood.

 

 
Among other things, The Seagull is a play about actors. An actress visits her brother's estate, and she is so bored. She says, "Oh, is there anything more boring than this pure country boredom?  It's hot, it's sleepy, no one's doing anything . . . It's nice to be with you my friends, I enjoy listening to you, but . .. to be sitting in a hotel room and learning my lines---what could be better?"

And the young girl, Nina (played by Jamie Romero), who dreams of a life on stage, says, "Oh yes!  I know exactly what you mean."

Life imitates art imitating life. Here is Jamie Nina Zarechnaya, watching rehearsal from the wings:

 

Here she is learning her lines:

 
 

And here she is.chatting with with Louis Schaefer, playing Sorin:

 

Really, what could be better?

 

 

 

Thoroughly Awesome Millie

Two weeks ago we lost one of our oldest friends, Louis Cicotello . Now, with the unexpected death of Millie Harrison last Saturday, we've lost one of our youngest, and one of our our best. This one is hard to talk about, partly because we find ourselves talking in cliches--- "Millie never wasted a moment of her life," "She lived every moment," "She's an inspiration for us all," etc.  All true, too. Here she is with Katie Girton.

 
Millie was 19 when she died, just about the age when some of our younger students begin to work with us. But Millie had been with us since she was 13, when she was cast as the Little Beggar in our production of The Arabian Nights, and once we met Millie we didn't let her go.  She appeared on stage in some celebrated minor roles. She was an exceptionally fetching box of French Fries in The Santaland Diaries.

 

She was an intentionally unmemorable stunt double as a sleeping body in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

 

 

Backstage, Millie was everywhere, always in the center of the action, yet never calling attention to herself.  Find her here.

 

Or here:

 

Millie became our ongoing THEATREWORKS super-intern, a position we would have liked her to have occupied for the next fifty years.  She was too useful to be our mascot, but too adorable, too cute and too young not to be. She did everything, she did everything well, with enthusiasm, dedication, competency---and-- here's the actual truth-- with joy.  In the long dark nights of technical reheasals, there was always a sunflower in our theatre--Millie's face.  Day in, day out, Millie brightened our lives.

Millie was a genuinely cheerful person, but fortunately spiced with mischief.  Kari Martin, our producing director, remembers how Millie programmed her phone with random alarms reminding Kari to smell flowers, chase rainbows, and blow her nose. Millie also reprogrammed her name in Kari's directory as "Millie is Awesome." Kari let that one stand and rightly so, because Mille was awesome.  When we wanted an A-team backstage crew for the 1001 rapid costume changes required in The Mystery of Irma Vep, the first person I asked for was Millie. As it turned out, for once I didn't get her --- the secret was out and another theatre needing her talents had asked for her hand first.

Mille didn't belong only to us, but Kari remembers how quickly she became part of our THEATREWORKS family.  She had a very good one of her own, too, and sometimes they joined us. Kari told me her parents wanted to know if they could "do a little something" for Millie's 14th birthday between our Saturday shows of The Arabian Nights.  What the cast found in our green room that afternoon, as Kari describes, were "streamers, 15 pizzas, a cake shaped like a spider, sodas, snacks and handmade marshmallow pretzel monsters for each cast member. This was the first of 1001 potluck suppers and desserts that her parents brought to us through the years."  Engage Millie, and you'd get fed by Terri and Cecil.  One very sweet deal.

Everyone on our staff has a special Millie memory---but one of our favorites was the summer she spent with us working on our repertory of Hamlet and Antonio's Revenge.  The latter play ends with a grotesquely comic mass regicide -- for which Millie was stationed under the stage with a large syringe of blood she squirted up through the floor boards.  She loved this assignment.  She beamed when I first gave it to her.  Kari remembers, "the first night she produced a two foot stream, and the audience groaned in delight.  The next night it was up to four feet, with proportionately more appreciation.  So the night after, Millie shot her stream a full sixteen feet, splattering on our lights. We are still cleaning red colored corn syrup off our instruments."  Throughly awesome Millie, giving her usual 320%, and very happy about it too. Find her and some of her handiwork here:

 
 
Kari also remembers that in Hamlet, "Millie made a nest of pillows under the stage and lay there every night listening to the show, which she learned nearly by heart. One of her assignments was to pass up poor Yorick's skull to the first gravedigger, Bob Rais.  One night Bob went completely blank. The first gravedigger was staring at the second gravedigger; the second gravedigger was staring back. The show stopped dead in its tracks. Then, from the deepest part of the grave, Millie's voice called out, 'Fetch me a stroup of liquor.'" The show went on. Find Millie here.

 

Millie was far too bright a light to be hidden in the dark--- I once saw her put on a blonde wig and lipstick and play Marilyn Monroe at Wasson High School--and she was terrific, fun and sexy too.  So I'm not  saying she always belonged under our stage.  But even so, whenever we build a deck in our theater, I'm likely to think of Millie under it, invisible, alert, smiling, ready for magic and mischief, ready to go.  And I kind of hope that one night  when we've turned out the lights after rehearsal, on our way towards the theatre exit, I will her her clear voice ringing out:  "Fetch me a stroup of liquor."

And Millie, I will, too. Along with a monster marshmallow pretzel. On the double. And call everyone I know.  And we will all just sit there with you and listen to your lovely, young beating heart.