„Uncle Vanya“: No woods in England!

“Chekhov” has continued to take over my life to the point that it currently occupies about 80 percent of my brain, whereas all the rest has to make do with 20 percent. Might become a problem, in the long run, but at the moment I love it. And I don’t expect it to last anyway. I presume this “vortex” will spit me out as suddenly and unexpectedly as it has sucked me in. Ideally, AFTER I have been to the theatre …

At the moment it feels like another breakthrough. After having read “Uncle Vanya” (getting deeply moved), “Ivanov” (getting intrigued), “The Seagull” (getting bored), and “Three Sisters” (getting fascinated and pleased), something happened that made me see how these very different reading experiences were linked and what it is that, in my opinion, makes “Chekhov” so special. However, this became unexpectedly difficult to trace.

I think it started with something that appears to be entirely beside the point. When I emailed Claudia about my disappointment with “The Seagull” her answer contained a bit of information that she correctly assumed would interest me. It was about Richard Armitage contacting the Forestry Commission to learn something about woods. As I understood, she found this rather weird, and, for a second, “weird” registered with me. Then I remembered what I know about how he works, and thought: Obviously! There is no way he would play a character without knowing anything about such a vitally important issue in his life. Just a few days later, though, something happened in real life that made me aware that there might be more to this – where CHEKHOV is concerned! – than knowing what you are talking about. I mean – he could have googled all this!

Talking about “weird”! I certainly don’t have to look far from home. After we had talked about “Uncle Vanya” about two weeks ago, I made a mental footnote which I would now translate as:

“I NEED TO THINK ABOUT TREES!”

And then, of course, I never got round to thinking about trees because there was so much of the human stuff to think about. The email finally got me started on trees as it made me remember the exact moment I got sucked into “Chekhov”. It was when I read Dr. Astrov saying – apologetically: “I just love trees!” – How very odd!!!

The fastest way to make me realize that there is something DIFFERENT that I might like is to surprise me. And this sentence certainly did. Although there were many things going on when I read “Uncle Vanya”, I described my basic feeling about it as “deeply moved”. And this was the moment that taught me how to be that. And recognize it as something I WANTED to be – not something I am vaguely ashamed of - as I noticed that this moment related to something that happened some time before I read the play. I don’t remember what the context was, but somehow I came upon the question what I thought to be the most wonderfully inexplicable thing in the world not made by humans. And, to my astonishment, I discovered that it was not something beautiful and complex like a coral reef, or something majestic and inconceivable like a mountain. Not even something infinitely clever like DNA. And - as I think Chekhov would agree! - it is certainly not a human being. No, actually, for me it is a TREE.

Then, just two days after this, something happened in real life that appears even more inconsequential but made me see why this moment had been so important, and how it related to what I had subconsciously understood about “Chekhov”. On the weekend I went to see my mother, and we went out for a walk in the nearby forest. And, unlike me, who mostly walk with my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds – or rather firmly planted in a different world! -  she constantly notices things. In this case, she pointed out the clusters of small saplings to me that grow from the seeds accidentally scattered on the soil and that she used to make her Christmas decoration in front of the house. As half my head was in “Chekhov”, I began to wonder if some of them were meant to be raised into trees to supplant the big trees that get removed by and by, or if a part of the forest would be chopped down eventually and get supplanted by “artificially” raised trees. And, to my astonishment, I realized that I had no clue.

I must say I was a bit pissed off that I had no clue because this is where I grew up, and we even knew the forester in charge of these woods who was a friend of my parents. I just never paid attention to any of this, though, on the other hand, I noticed that I knew a lot about these woods from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I noticed that I know what trees grow there, and am able to recognize them in winter, without their leaves. I know what animals live in that forest because I recognize them by their footprints. I even know the names of most varieties of mushrooms, and if they are fit to eat, because we went there to collect them when I was a child. I know which plants are poisonous … and so on.

When I came to England for the first time I don’t think I even NOTICED the absence of woods. Where I grew up woodlands are part of the landscape, though not THE landscape – as in big parts of Scandinavia, or, I suppose, Russia. In England I always notice the hedges because they got vastly eliminated in Bavaria in the course of reallocation. This happened when I was a little child, so I never got to know the landscape as it had been before. Compared to England it appeared barren – but the thought never struck me that they need the hedges because, without them, there wouldn’t be ANYTHING. No trees, no birds, no wild beasts. (Maybe that’s why there are so many birdwatchers in Britain. Without woodland there remains so little else …?) The first time I really NOTICED this was when we visited an archaeological site of a village deserted since the 15^th century, and when I learned that the woods had largely been chopped down in the late Middle Ages to make room for sheep farming. Tweed was the trade to make money with, and people who had farmed rented lands were no longer needed because sheep farming is extensive. So, who couldn’t become a sheep farmer had to rent a loom and become a weaver – until cotton became more profitable. The next big change that turned England into an industrialized country. Much more so than where I lived and where rural structures continued, basically - or Russia, where, I suppose, wood is still a major economic factor. Even increasingly so, because of climate change and renewable energy. “We” tend to think that, in our age, there is just Amazon and Google, and megacities, and airports everywhere – but most of the SPACE is still occupied by some kind of rural structure. The “timeless” moment for me, of course, that I already mentioned, was the bit when Dr. Astrov points out the maps and the change to Helen. If we DON’T CARE trees just get chopped down, and with them not just people’s livelihood but also the STRUCTURE of the landscape and the structure of people’s lives disappears. And WE CANNOT CARE ABOUT WHAT WE DON’T KNOW. As I realized: You can grow up in England without any PERSONAL experience about woods. Woods or forest industry – one could google that for hours on end without UNDERSTANDING anything about it. So, I assume, Richard Armitage hoped to get in touch with somebody for whom forests are a PERSONAL thing.

What I noticed quite early on reading “Uncle Vanya” about Chekhov’s REALISM: Even though the landscape and the environment and historical setup seldom come into what is happening on the stage, it isn’t just background. It is a STRUCTURAL part of who these people are. And I suppose this kind of realism is a common experience for these actors I like so much - who always need to know where their characters wake up in the morning, and what their dreams were, what they will have for breakfast and so on … Of course they are trying to do this with EVERY character they are playing. I think I really understood this when I began to follow Christopher Eccleston who - every time he plays somebody – comes out as this completely different human being. He made me finally understand what I find so fascinating about this, and made me notice this quality in other actors more than I did before – as right now in Richard Armitage, watching his former work in a row and having heard some of his audiobooks. These actors just wouldn’t stop until they had found out about what is in these people’s lives – or had added it themselves. But Chekhov is himself “specially special” where realism is concerned. I learned this by the way he made me react to these people JUST READING the plays. I think it is because he works under the assumption that there is always MORE to people, and to live, than meets the eye. And contrives how to show us that there is more. That is why I became intrigued reading “Ivanov”: It appears that this is where he discovered his “calling” - or probably just went so much deeper with it than he did in his former work. I don’t know his former work, but the impression that I get from Wikipedia is that he was very interested in the peculiarities and weirdness of people, and that a lot of it is rather funny and farcical. In “Ivanov”, more than in his other plays, there are these people who are rather mean, or peculiar, or annoying – like some kind of “background noise” of life. But in his main protagonist he appears to investigate his special brand of tragic irony. Ivanov is in deep shit because he married a woman for love who would have brought him money, but her parents cast her off because of the marriage. A few years later he doesn’t love her anymore, she is gravely ill, and he is broke. Luckily for him, his wife finally dies, and he would be able to marry the daughter of a wealthy neighbour whom he has fallen in love with some time before. At least this is how EVERYBODY ELSE sees it: That he made his wife unhappy and caused her premature death to be finally able to marry an heiress. But his wife would have died of her tuberculosis anyway, sooner or later, the new marriage would have been the end of all his difficulties, and everybody would have been the better for it. Everybody EXCEPT Ivanov who somehow doesn’t WANT to be this person – not just doesn’t want to be seen as this person by others. Being this person causes a MORAL dilemma that will be the end of him – though, in our age, he would probably be diagnosed with clinical  depression. I even noticed the word “depression” being used in the play, but I don’t think that it was seen as a clinical illness at the time. I think Chekhov sees it as a moral “illness” – and people can die of something like this because there is always so much more to their lives than meets the eye. So much more than they understand and can handle. I couldn’t know this, but I believe that I wouldn’t have bothered to take Ivanov seriously and FEEL for him if I hadn’t read “Uncle Vanya” before and got into the vein of being KIND AND UNDERSTANDING. Using the attitude I learned there, I got the impression that he is absolutely right to feel that he has DONE nothing wrong. Nonetheless, the whole situation is so morally wrong that he cannot find a way out.

“Ivanov” was the first play of this kind – and I think it can be rather challenging for our moral setup, even in the 21^st century. In “Uncle Vanya” Chekhov extended this moral complexity, potentially giving it to all of his five main protagonists. At least I tried to read it like this, and it worked – though it took an effort. I am glad that I wrote about this because I set down my reluctance and reservations. But I also noticed how Chekhov made me LIKE to do this.

Naturally, I expected “The Seagull” to be similar and was totally disappointed. Of course it was MY READING that made it so dissatisfactory, but I just couldn’t get “inside” any of these people. I felt that there were only stupid, commonplace lives that don’t interest me, nothing that I didn’t know already, nothing to surprise me … At the same time I noticed that, especially compared with “Uncle Vanya”, a lot of things HAPPEN in this play. People are DOING things – like moving on and becoming an actress, or having an affair … but these are just the kind of stories I have read so many times and that always end in the same way. Even though they are supposed to be these forward, artistic people, the characters appear dull because there is nothing to them I don’t already know. And I feel that Chekhov doesn’t GIVE me anything about them to get deeper – like something that feels different on the inside than it feels on the outside (as in “Ivanov”), or somebody saying beautifully inconsequential things like “I just love trees!” In my opinion, he is at his best when he so efficiently BREAKS THE SURFACE that we can get a view INSIDE.

Reading “Three Sisters”, I was relieved that this experience was not repeated. And I was so pleased that, as soon as I started reading, I distinctly remembered the great experience I had with the play seeing it at Schiller-Theater Berlin approximately thirty years ago. It was one of these shows where I understood why theatre is like nothing else in the world – an experience that couldn’t be replaced by anything else. I had almost forgotten this – and now I am discovering it again, with new eyes! Reading the play now, I understood that it hadn’t just been great acting and directing but also Chekhov’s great text that had brought this on. For one thing, he goes further with moral complexity, widening his scheme to even more people. And then, even though on the outside there are a lot of things happening – like a fire that burns down part of the city, or the militia leaving the city in the last act, even one of the characters killing himself, I think, but I keep forgetting this in “Chekov” because it appears so inconsequential … Despite all these things happening, the world appears totally static. I think this is because Chekhov is investigating another dimension of life and time more than he did before: the MOMENT. Whatever happens, whatever we see on the stage, is just a “snapshot”: People rushing in for no reason, leaving for no reason, just sitting and reading while other people are talking, groups of people talking AT THE SAME TIME … This last bit was what I remember most about the production, as an entirely new experience. And I remember that I thought: When this is possible on the stage, somebody must have done it right! I mean, it was all perfectly transparent, even though people were talking at the same time. I think this was when I understood about theatre and timing. That timing is almost everything – besides good acting, of course. It might be because of this production that I always resent it in Shakespeare when people are just standing there, waiting until it is their time to speak. And I hate it when somebody answers before what the other person said could have registered with him. I always appreciate actors trying to be “reactive” when they are just listening to others or observing what is going on. But I understand as well that it is seldom possible in "Shakespeare" to do different things at the same time because it is important WHAT is happening. In “Chekhov” a lot of things happen at the same time that are not important at all. Instead it is the FACT that they are happening which is important. I was so pleased to remember this experience so distinctly, and to be able to use it for reading the play as I did. As this fascinating AESTHETICAL experience. Even though it is the most recent play I read, I hardly recall anything about the content, but, once in a while, people happen to say something vitally important. Like:

“Why is it we have hardly started living before we all become dull, drab, boring, lazy, complacent, useless and miserable?”

Ummm? (😕😖😢) I am sure, usually, I don’t perceive my life QUITE like this. But, reading Chekhov for three weeks, I instantly subscribed to it!