Chekhov’s Plays as the Basis of Metatheatral Performances in the 2010s

Abstract

Chekhov’s drama has retained its constant popularity throughout the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century and has an unbroken scenic history. In modern theater it performs several functions: 1) of a literary basis for the-atrical action, carefully preserved by the director (traditionalist approach); 2) of a kind of material that can and should be adapted, modernized, adjusted to the urgent range of acute problems and to today’s scenic language (avant-garde, post-dramatic approach). One might argue that Chekhov’s drama transitions into the category of “proto-text” or “metatext”. Productions of Chekhov’s plays are often the ones that become the realm of the most radical theatrical experiments when their “familiar” “proto-text”, their basis and foundation are, so to speak, factored out from them: his drama remains in the domain of literature, of reader’s attention while the theater moves ahead – into the area of new scenic opportunities which are only tangentially