Interview with Emily Mann
 Emily Mann |
Artistic Director Emily Mann’s productions of Chekhov’s plays—The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya—are among McCarter's most renowned. As a director and adaptor she seems to have a natural ear for understanding Chekhov and translating his writing it into a world that is all at once accessible, entertaining, touching and hilarious. For the final play of McCarter’s 2007-2008 season she will direct the fourth of Chekhov’s major plays, The Seagull, in her own free adaptation, A Seagull in the Hamptons. She spoke with McCarter Literary Manager Carrie Hughes about the play and her long “collaboration” with Chekhov.
CH: This will be your fourth production of Chekhov’s major work, and you have adapted three of them yourself. Maybe we could just start by talking about Chekhov.
EM: I suppose what’s most interesting to me about my relationship with Chekhov is I’ve been thinking about him most of my conscious life. I read The Seagull in high school and I loved it because I understood the young people— Nina, of course, and Treplev— and how awful the adults were, and how they’d all betrayed the children. I just thought it was 'a cool play'. Of course, I didn't really understand the play, not in its entirety. I didn’t feel ready to direct any of Chekhov's plays until I was almost 40. Ironically, The Seagull is the last one I feel ready to direct. Until I understood the adults— really understood them — I couldn’t do it.
So I’ve been thinking about Seagull since I was 17 or 18 years old, and I realized a couple of years ago I didn’t want to see it done in the old way. For me it is a very modern play. It hasn’t dated. For the last few summers we’ve been going out to our friends’ in the Hamptons, and I suddenly one day pictured the play on the beach, set now. I could picture the house and I could hear the scenes.
We went off to Ireland two summers ago, and I brought some old terrible translations of Seagull that were in the public domain with me. I gave myself total freedom to just write and respond and what came out was actually very faithful to Chekhov and yet also very contemporary. I think because I knew the play so well, it came out in a flood. It was effortless and thrilling and I thought, you know, this feels right.
CH: What made you start doing your own adaptations of Chekhov?
EM: The simple answer is I wanted to get closer to him. I felt that Lanford Wilson [whose translation of Three Sisters I directed], as beautiful as his translation was, Lanford was between me and Chekhov. I wanted to get directly in contact with Chekhov as if he were in the room with me, as if we were in conversation— and the only way I knew how to do that was by wrestling word for word with him.
I had to work with someone who knows the language intimately, so I sat down with [Princeton Russian literature professor] Ellen Chances and a million literal translations and went through every line with her. The first one I adapted was Cherry Orchard in 2000, and when I did a draft without her, just with the clunky translations, she had a note on every line. By the time I showed her Seagull, which is actually the most free, she said, this is the most accurate translation of this play I can imagine. I had the essence of it. I think it’s from having gotten to know Chekhov that intimately on a word-to-word level on those other adaptations that Seagull could just fly out of me.
CH: Why set this play in the present day?
EM: Every single one of these people is someone I know. The older actress, her troubled son, the young writer who is really, really full of himself and isn’t quite as good as he wants to be and can’t quite commit to a woman— I know them all too well. The young girl who wants to be an actress and falls madly, insanely in love with the older man who uses her and throws her away— these beautiful, simple, completely true and real characters, they were true then; they’re true now. Wherever or whenever you set this play, you will find the truth in it, because that was Chekhov’s genius.
I also wanted to blow off the dust that has covered up the fun, the humor and all the deep, deep drama of his work and be simple and alive and now. That is what he wanted when he wrote it. If I see another one of these Seagulls that doesn’t get a laugh and everyone’s in a corset, I’m going to scream. Chekhov was a stage rat. He knew what a funny line was. He knew actors. He understood what would and wouldn’t work on stage. He understood the humor in everyday misery. Everyday joy. Theater people revere him because he was the ultimate humanist.
CH: Do you have anything else you want the audience to know?
EM: You know the way Edward Albee said that I wish you’d come to see this play as if this were the first play you’d ever seen… I feel the same way. And if you can’t do that than at least come as if this is the first Seagull you’ve ever seen. I want the audience to come to it absolutely fresh and with no preconceptions and just see how it hits them. I think that if you come with your idea of what Chekhov should be or what The Seagull should be— or what a play should be, for that matter— you’ll miss out on a real experience.
