"Wonderfully fresh and affecting." - Ben Brantley, New York Times
"This lucid interpretation rewards with its deep understanding of a
complex play." -David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
The works of Russia's greatest playwright, Anton Chekhov, masterfully
blend comedy and pathos, creating a richness of texture and
characterization rarely seen since Shakespeare. With Three Sisters
(1901), his portrait of the Prozorov family's elusive dream of returning
from the provinces to an idealized Moscow, he captured a restlessness
and yearning which remain enduringly modern. In Paul Schmidt's version -
the basis for the Wooster Group's acclaimed adaptation Brace Up! - we
can perceive, for the first time in English, a refreshingly clear and
colloquial style we instinctively know as Chekhov's own.
ANTON CHEKHOV (1860-1904) led a double life as a practicing
physician and a celebrated author of short stories and plays. The Moscow
Art Theater's stagings of The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry
Orchard and Three Sisters - under the direction of Konstantin
Stanislavsky - secured Chekhov's reputation as a world-class dramatist.
PAUL SCHMIDT edited Meyerhold at Work and has translated writings
by Rimbaud, Khlebnikov, Gogol, Kaiser, Mayakovsky and Genet. Recipient
of an NEA fellowship and of a doctorate in Russian from Harvard
University, his translations, adaptations and original plays have been
performed across the country.
