The Dramaturge’s Word

As claimed by some unspoken rules, this text was primarily intended to be a theoretical framework of the script providing an answer to the following question: “Why Chekhov and why today?” However, as it always happens in his plays, at one point the course of events changed. The sounds of the theatre woke up. It was completely unplanned and coincidental, and due to a conjuncture of events, that this premiere of The Seagull happened to take place on the same day as the Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull in 1898, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. The spirits of the theatre woke up. It was Monday, the evening rehearsal! All of a sudden, the whole atmosphere caused the air on the stage to move. Then, we received the news of the untimely passing of Goran Stefanovski. Stunned by the news and totally speechless, we silently wondered “Why Goran and why today?” He has entered into this play without a plan and will remain forever present in every word of it and every silence in it. A conjuncture of events… “Life has beaten theatre once again”, someone would say. Some theoreticians consider The Seagull a guide-book that provides information about what kind of theatre productions we should make. Great authors do not feel the egoistic need to change the world; they only have an unbearable need to write down their own views. Life is what they want to teach us. That is why both Chekhov and Goran are present always and everywhere, moreover, because this world is made of words, and words that echo life remain to tremble in eternity. Only theatre, into which life has been woven and is still trembling, will ultimately beat life, the one that is clean, honest, playful and Chekhovian. And such theatre cannot be done; it only subtly opens a window and allows us to enter secretly as thieves, to nest ourselves in our mother's womb and thus become one soul of the world. However, in the end I’ll answer the question which this text was supposed to answer: “Because Chekhov is always”. We shall stop wondering when we finally realize that Chekhov’s plays are life – pure, cruel, focused life that happens everywhere, in all languages ​​and in every present.

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Dragana Lukan Nikoloski

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04.12.2018

Skopje