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Three Sisters Director's Note

The story of Three Sisters is a simple one – a family in a provincial town dreams of the city. They sit around and sigh about going to Moscow, about the joys of hard work, about unhappy marriages and unrequited loves. Olga is a schoolteacher, Masha is married (but restless), and Irina yearns to be somewhere else. All the characters in Three Sisters want something more. Their insistence that they will go to Moscow has become a bit of a theatrical joke. Why don’t they just pick up and go? There are shades of Beckett in Chekhov:

VLADIMIR: Well, shall we go?

ESTRAGON: Yes, let’s go.

They do not move

Maybe the sisters are waiting for Godot, or maybe just God. But they've been waiting for more than a hundred years.

The first time I saw Three Sisters was at Williamstown Theatre Festival in the summer of 2008. I was about to go off to college to study theatre. The theatre department also produced it that fall, right around the presidential election, as we are doing now. There must be something about this season that suits Chekhov (and college campuses). Maybe it’s the falling leaves, the growing darkness, the autumn chill that stills our hearts and gives us pause. This is a time for yearning. For knowing that if we wait long enough, if we survive the winter, there will be spring again. There is hope in the midst of despair, if we can grasp it.

In preparing the script for this production, I used several translations from the public domain and edited the language to make it feel sharper and more natural to our modern ears. I wanted to evoke a kind of nostalgic “past,” drawing on styles and references from throughout the twentieth century, not tethered to Chekhov’s moment of writing or a singular concept. We can see shades of our own world reflected here in this production, a kind of funhouse mirror effect.

I want to thank the cast and crew for going on this journey with me. Working on Chekhov is akin to a marathon for an actor. It takes endurance and commitment to realize the depth and complexity of these characters. I can’t wait for you to see them bring this world to life.

Dr. Emily MacLeod, Director