{"id":85,"date":"2010-06-10T09:05:33","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T21:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=85"},"modified":"2010-06-10T09:09:31","modified_gmt":"2010-06-09T21:09:31","slug":"the-seagull-portrait-of-the-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/06\/10\/the-seagull-portrait-of-the-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seagull: Portrait of the Artist?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Seagull (Court Theatre)<\/p><\/div>\n

On Wednesday night I went to see Chekhov’s play, The Seagull<\/a>,<\/strong> which is being put on at the Court Theatre<\/strong><\/a>, in the historic Arts Centre<\/a>. <\/strong>I knew that The Seagull<\/em> was one of Chekhov’s most famous plays, but although I studied The Cherry Orchard<\/em> and Platonov\/Wild Honey<\/em> at university I realised, as I took my seat, that I really had no idea of The Seagull<\/em> story.\u00a0 But sometimes that is the best way to find out what the play is about<\/em><\/span>, by actually sitting through it!<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, it was with considerable amusement that I realised that the play was\u2014to an extent\u2014about being a writer and the writing life (obviously, being a Chekhov play, there was a LOT more to it than that).\u00a0 And given the equally amused “aside” glances of my friends as the writer Trigorin went through his second act monologue on this very subject, elements clearly still rang true after over a century.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps\u2014the lowering reflection\u2014writers are just not very original in their relationship to their art and the writing life is in itself a well-worn trope? (Scary thought!)<\/p>\n

But if you want to hear the details of that particular discussion for yourself, you will have to go and see the play\u2014the Court staging was excellent, with subtle and powerful performances from all the central characters. And although the dramatic approach Chekhov effectively pioneered in The Seagull <\/em>has now become mainstream, it is still possible to see how the subtleties within the play, and the prevalence of subtext, were ground breaking\u2014and established Chekhov as one of the pre-eminent modern dramatists.<\/p>\n

Or if Anton Chekov’s The Seagull<\/em> is not playing in a theatre near you, get a copy of the play and have a read.\u00a0 I think it will repay the effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday night I went to see Chekhov’s play, The Seagull, which is being put on at the Court Theatre, in the historic Arts Centre. I knew that The Seagull was one of Chekhov’s most famous plays, but although I studied The Cherry Orchard and Platonov\/Wild Honey at university I realised, as I took my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}