Three Sisters

Around the turn of the 20th century, the rapid process of industrialization was quickly changing the shape and structure of the social order. Along with technological advances came mechanized labor, the gathering of the working class in newly forming urban centers, and a pervading sense of alienation from the natural world. In Russia, there was growing upheaval under Tsar Nicholas II, who would become the last of the Romanov dynasty and Russia’s final tsar. The extremely strict structure of class hierarchies under an autocratic monarch—a government that is led by a single leader with absolute power—was oppressive to those in the lower classes. Even with legal changes that weakened some of these hierarchies, the lower classes were still living in poverty, and there was little practical change in the everyday aspects of Russian lives. Conditions were poor in Russia, particularly for the working class and the growing urban middle class that migrated to cities in search of jobs such as factory work. During Chekhov’s lifetime, any attempts at resistance by those who were pushing for a more leftist or democratic Russia were quickly suppressed by the tsar, and political parties were illegal in Russia until 1905, the year after Chekhov’s death. The increasing unrest among the lower classes ultimately led to the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917, in which Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne but was ultimately executed in 1918 along with his entire family, ending the Romanov line. Despite this eventuality, it is important to remember that Chekov’s frame of reference ended in 1904, long before these events took place.

As these changes occurred in Russia, there was a seismic shift in the general perspective on the nature of truth, life, and the human experience, and this shift is reflected in art. While artists have always sought to uncover or approach some understanding of truth through a variety of styles and methods, modernists began seeing morality as relative rather than absolute. Accordingly, artists during this time frame began to invent new, ideology-based methods of representing each subject. These various movements—which included realism, naturalism, symbolism, expressionism, dadaism, futurism, and many more—made up the avant-garde and often began with manifestos about what art should be and why. These manifestos dictated the styles and conventions of the art that was produced by members of each movement.

Before the rise of modernism, the dominant artistic style in Russia and across the western world was Romanticism, which rejected the rules of neoclassicism, venerated nature in the face of the industrial revolution, and tended to present heightened drama and idealized representation. The first avant-garde movement was realism, which began in France. Realist playwrights staged real, present social issues within a well-made play structure that follows an Aristotelian pyramid shape, and they also used a burgeoning interest in psychology to create psychologically realistic characters. The idea of unspoken subtext in theater was a new idea. By contrast, naturalism abandoned the manipulated narrative structure and instead attempted to approach truth by presenting an imitation of real life onstage.

In Russia, theaters were monopolized by the government until 1882. In other words, they were tightly controlled and under strict censorship. When the monopoly was abolished, theaters began to crop up around the newly forming urban centers, and most of them focused on producing melodramas. However, two theater-makers, Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, came together with the goal of building a theater to produce works of realism and naturalism. While the idea of naturalistic staging and psychological realism in acting are commonplace today and are even considered old-fashioned, these two movements were radical at the turn of the 20th century. Stanislavski, who is now one of the most famous theater practitioners in history, wanted to revolutionize actor training. He is now associated with the Stanislavski system of method acting, which is something of a misnomer, as Stanislavski himself never solidified a singular method. Instead, he wrote about his various experiments in eliciting real emotions in actors by teaching them how to connect to their characters. The two men opened their theater in 1898, and their first few productions were successful. However, later in their first season, they remounted Chekhov’s ostensibly career-ending failure, The Seagull, and their production was such a success that it brought new attention to the Moscow Art Theatre. In fact, the theater soon adopted an outline of a seagull as its symbol. After Chekhov’s death, the Moscow Art Theatre continued to evolve and still exists today.