My first impression

Before my class broke up to go on our half term we got given our plays that we are going to be working on when we come back. The class has been split in 3 each group with a different play by Anton Chekhov. These three plays are Cherry orchard, The seagull and Three sisters. I got placed in the group with the play Three sisters.

Over the holidays I read through the play however I found it hard to keep focus when reading. The first act felt very dry and long for no particular reason with not much but general conversation being discussed. However as the play progressed things started to happen and I thought that it would start to take the play in a different direction, it never did. A good example of this is the fire in Act 3, there is panic and tension about but then it all quickly dies down and the play is back to its dull setting.

This kind of unsureness throughout the play on whether it is actually going to go anywhere is like the three sisters lives. Their super objective throughout the play is to move back to Moscow and we are never sure whether they ever will. Also the dullness of the play is just a reflection on how repetitive the three sisters lives are. Its always the same people in each scene with not much changing. Their live are so dull they are led into having affairs or marrying the wrong people just for the sake of it.

I also took it upon myself to see what the play would look like when  it comes to life. Therefore I went online and watched BBC's version of Three sisters from 1970 and was amazed at how easy the words flew off the page and made a performance that was very different to how it reads. When it was a written play I found it hard to keep interest when reading but as I watched it being performed I enjoyed it and got a much better understanding of what was going on because I was fully engulfed by the performance. This gave me a better feeling about having to study and perform it myself because based on first impressions of reading it, I thought it was going to be boring and drag a little bit. But now after seeing that when the play is brought to life you can add things like humour that you might not have necessarily been able to place when reading, it is going to be something a little bit new to me but very interesting to work on.