The Seagull 2288

Cherry Orchard Center presents The Seagull 2288, based on the play by Anton Chekhov, adapted and directed by Alexandre Marine.
Produced by Marina Levitskaya and Victor Rashkovich as part of The White Square Theatre Festival, New York.

Written at the turn of the 19th Century, and produced at the Moscow Art Theater, this most enigmatic of Chekhov’s plays altered the entire course of development of modern theater and dramaturgy. Each subsequent new theater generation has searched for its own truth in The Seagull, and the answer to the artist’s primary question: “What is Art?”

The Seagull 2288 is a completely modern play, outside the contexts of time and place. The action develops within the framework of Shakespeare’s famous concept of “a theater within the theater” or “a play within the play.”
The interdependence of art and reality is seen here in a space which creates interaction between stage, set, actors and audience. The characters of The Seagull end up on Konstantin’s stage during critical turning points in their lives, or when they desire to get “closer to God.” The theatrical result is at once tragic and comic. Tragic because everything is really happening to these characters, and comic because we recognize that it is all happening on stage, and therefore is all artificial.