Director: Jung Ga-young
Playwright: Anton Chekhov
Institution: SeoKyeong University, Korea
Venue: Experimental Theatre
Time: 14:30, May 21, 2012
Event: The 2nd Asian Theatre Schools Festival
Director’s Notes
All of us live our lives. We try to fill the void as dreaming, loving, and sometimes fantasizing. When looking back on our life with age, we will see it slip through our fingers like sands. We endure tough life in this moment and work faithfully as not giving up our life even in any difficulties and anchoring hope full of happiness in the future. All the characters in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" seem our friends and families because we can see them around us. They shout out 'we, however, should live' to audiences once again.
In fact, Chekhov's play is not easy for students to act out, but we expect we in our twenties can portray it rather well because we have ambition and passion to endure our life filled with love, loss, and pains. We made efforts to rehearse during vacation with desires to fill an empty space. We wish our performance to deliver heartfelt meanings to both actors and audiences.
Synopsis
With the tumultuous years of nineteenth-century Russia, the play portrays delicate human psychology in mixed desires between urbanites and rural people around Vanya who takes care of an estate. Vanya is deeply attached to Helena in spite of disappointment of her snobbery. When Serebrakoff intends to sell the estate and leave for a city, Vanya who has spent his best years working the land, aims a gun at him. Serebrakoff and Helena depart hastily, and Vanya returns to his previous routine again.
Act I (a summer afternoon) A garden in front of the house
In the visit of a retired professor and his beautiful young wife, Helena, to rest in quiet and leisurely rural life, a country house is boisterous. Vanya who worked hard has succumbed to lethargy, and Dr. Astroff who extols the beauty of nature gets to stay in the place. Inaddition, Vanya is disappointed in professor's secular behaviours and hates him. He falls under Helena's spell and adores her.
Act II (a summer night) The dining room of the house
The professor is in feud with his much younger wife while growing aging and ailing.
Vanya attempts to declare his love to Helena drunkenly: she rejects him wholeheartedly. Sonia also suffers from her unrequited feelings for Dr. Astroff but does not have the nerve to confess her love for him. Helena who knows her anguish converses with Sonia, and they get intimate .
Act III (a summer day) The living room of the house
While Vanya go to pick conciliatory flowers for Helena, Helena cross-examines Astroff with regards to Sonia, but he is convinced of Helena's own desire for him and kisses he Vanya is shocked to see it. When all of the household appear, the professor announces his intention to sell the estate and suggests urban life to them on the interest. Vanya is livid, protesting that he was only working the land to the professor's benefit, and chides himself for it. He points a gun at the professor.
Act IV (a fall night) Vanya's room
Astroff detests Vanya from committing suicide. The professor and Helena depart, and while embracing Vanya, Sonia says to him, "We shall rest soon" in the estate screwed up.