Instructor: Molly R. Avila
This course introduces students to the innovative and influential plays of Anton Chekhov. At the turn of the century, Chekhov’s plays challenged established tropes of what constituted the “theatrical,” rejected explicit requirements for “comedy” and “tragedy,” and questioned received knowledge about what makes a subject or person worthy of our attention, thereby transforming our notions not only of theater but also of the human experience. What was the new “stage” that Chekhov’s plays created and what was his role in theater’s development toward realism and modernism?In this course, we read eight Chekhov plays, focusing principally on his four masterpieces The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. Our reading is supplemented by sources that place Chekhov into his cultural context, concentrating particularly on his fraught relationship with those who first produced his plays-the Moscow Art Theater and the director Constantin Stanislavski.Through close reading and contextualization, students will attain an intimacy with Chekhov’splays and a broader understanding of how Chekhov’s innovations in realist theater have influenced contemporary drama. This course features three field trips to theaters and communities that regularly work with Chekhov’s plays, including the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, a direct inheritor of Stanislavski’s “method” technique, which was highly influenced by Chekhov’s plays.This course will satisfy the Slavic Department’s requirement for a course in Russian literatureor culture, and as a CLRS course, requirements in Comparative Literature as well.
