Checking Out Chekhov

Theatres world-wide embrace Chekhov's handful of plays with a fervour second only to Shakespeare's. Whatever their native language or culture, audiences often see themselves in his Russian characters, making Chekhov seem an author who easily transcends his own culture and time.Nonetheless, students, actors, and audiences alike are often initially puzzled by Chekhov's dramatic texts. Are they comic or tragic, ironic or sincere, starkly familiar or wilfully elusive? How can his often seemingly irrelevant dialogue create dynamic performances? In his stories and plays alike, Chekhov challenges his readers to diagnose his characters' desires, opinions, heartaches and joys in the same way that doctors diagnose illness—by attending closely to apparently trivial details. In the plays—where narrative voice is absent and characters speaks for themselves—reading under a microscope becomes all the more necessary.The expert attention that Carnicke pays to the performative dimensions of Chekhov's plays makes her book unique among the published guides to Chekhov's works.

Sharon Marie Carnicke (PhD Columbia University) is currently professor and associate dean of theatre at the University of Southern California, where she also holds a joint appointment in Slavic languages and literature. Her translations of Chekhov's plays have been produced by theatres nationwide to public acclaim. Their publication as Chekhov: 4 Plays and 3 Jokes prompted her nomination for the National Translation Award by the American Literary Translators Association in 2010. Her groundbreaking book, Stanislavsky in Focus is now in its second edition. Her other publications include The Theatrical Instinct, a study of the eccentric playwright/director Nikolai Evreinov (Peter Lang), and the co-authored book, Reframing Screen Performance.