The Cherry Orchard (1903)
General Introduction
GROUP REPORT Andy Clark David Paul Roy
Designed and Complied by BUCK LEE
1. Life Events of Anton Chekhov
1860 Born in Taranrog, Russia 1867-68 Taranrog grammar school 1868-79 Educated at a school for Greek boys, Taranrog 1879-84 Moscow University Medical School 1884 Graduated as doctor 1887 First-produced play, Ivanov 1888 Recipient: Pushkin Prize 1890 Traveled to Sakhalin Island 1901 Married the actress Olga Knipper 1884-92 Practice doctor in Moscow 1897 Suffered severe haemorrhage of the lungs 1898 First collaborated with Nemirovich Danchenko, Stanislavsky, and the Moscow Art Theater, on a revival of Chayka (The Seagull) 1892-99 Practice doctor in Melikohovo After 1899 Moved for reasons of ill-health to Yalta 1899 Member, Imperial Academy of Sciences 1904 Died in Badenweiler, Germany [TOP]
Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, who was famous for his masterful short stories and lyrical dreams.
Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in Taganrog, located south in Russia. He's the third of 6 children.
As Anton Chekhov grew up, he attended secondary school in Taganrog and in 1879 he enrolled in the School of Medicine at the University of Moscow. Six years later, he graduated. While in university, Anton Chekhov unfortunately got tuberculosis. Besides, he had to earn money to pay his way through college and support his family; Chekhov made a living by writing stories, short sketches or jokes to journals or papers. Later, a writer called Dmitry Grigotovich found his talent in writing and helped him improve the quality of his stories. As a result, Chekhov's reputation began to grow.
In 1890 Chekhov made a trip to the Prison Island of Sakhalin, which is in the Far East. After his return to Russia, Chekhov was devoted to the relief work during the 1892 famine. Then, he bought a small estate at Melikhovo and moved there with his family. While living there, Chekhov created some of his best-known works. In addition to that, he produced two of his major plays, "The Seagull" and "Uncle Vanya." In 1898, the newly formed Moscow Art Theatre successfully put "The Seagull" on the stage. Thanks to the success, the theatre also began to establish its reputation.
Chekhov is famed as a master of the short story. Although some of his best prose pieces are almost novel length, the stories, as well as his better-known short works, achieve their effect with a minimum of artistic means. All of Chekhov's best work is an illustration of his dictum or statement: " Conciseness is the sister of talent." Chekhov's plays deal with the passing of the vitality of the Russian gentry.
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- Helpless before the changes taking place in 19th century Russia.
- Take refuge in elaborate, improbable dreams of renewed prosperity.
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simple, mere outlines for the creation of atmosphere and delineation of character.
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group of plays combining comedy, pathos, anticlimax, and digression in a wholly natural effect.
His shorter plays include Medved (The Bear, 1888), Tragic ponevole (A Tragedian in Spite of Himself, 1889), Svadba (The Wedding, 1889), Na bolshoi doroge (On the High Road, 1884), Yubilei (The Jubilee, 1891), Predlozheniye (The Proposal, 1888), and Lebedinaya pesnya (1887).
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"The Cherry Orchard" portrays the declining fortunes of the Ranevskys, a landowning family, who are about to lose their estate and their beloved cherry orchard. Poor management, neglect, and impracticality have brought the family to the point of bankruptcy, but no one is able to act to head off the disaster. The suggestion of the practical businessman Lopakhin that the family chop down the orchard and build houses on the land is met with horror. For the Ranevskys, the orchard represents the pleasant past, before the mysterious forces of the changing times threatened their idyllic existence. The estate is finally sold from under the hapless family. Lopakhin buys the land and proceeds to carry out his plan to destroy the orchard and erect houses. As the family sadly prepares to depart, the sound of an axe chopping down a tree is heard from offstage.
The play, regarded as one of Chekhov's finest dramatic works, is both a penetrating study of the changing of life in Russia at the end of the 19th century. The stage portraits the Ranevskys, with their inability to do anything to save themselves, and of Lopakhin the representative of a new rising class in society, are masterpieces of dramatic creation.
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7. Performance Informations & Influences
"The Cherry Orchard" was written in 1903. The Cherry Orchard opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on Chekhov's birthday, January 17,1904. It was forbidden by the censor in 1906. After 1917, however, it became, alone with Gorki's The Lower Depths, the most popular play in Soviet Russia. A gala performance was given by the Moscow Art Theatre on January 17, 1944(on Chekhov's birthday), at which time Eva Le Gallienne and Joseph Schildkraut were performing the play in New York. The Moscow Art Company performed it in the United States in 1923-1924, to a total of 244 performances, the Chekov record in the United States.
Ward Morehouse called "The Cherry Orchard" (January 26, 1944) "a play of inaction ... crowded with pauses, sighs, chuckles, and irrelevancies. There is incessant prattling by minor characters." Robert Garland felt the deeper impact of the play: "It is, fundamentally, one of the most skillfully contrived and most heart-breaking comedies in the modern theatre." In fact, there are many digressions in the play, that is, many of the characters in it would say something that could not respond to the former dialogue. Although it seemed that everyone did not notice others with their response, they could talk very smoothly. The play draws an interesting sociological picture of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. The old aristocracy and landowning gentry were becoming impoverished and many proved unable to cope with the changes taking place.
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Reference
International Dictionary of Theatre-1 Plays (p.123-25)
International Dictionary of Theatre-2 Playwrights (p.184-7)
Guide of Great Plays (p.142, p.147-8)
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