The Seagull

About

Chekhov's 1895 play follows a group of artists and lovers at a country estate, each longing for something just out of reach: recognition, reciprocated love, youth, freedom. Its premiere in St. Petersburg was a famous disaster; the audience laughed in the wrong places. But its subsequent production by the Moscow Art Theatre under Stanislavski transformed European theater, establishing the naturalist method — indirect action, subtext, the sound of daily life — as the dominant paradigm of the twentieth century. The seagull of the title appears in only one scene but haunts the play as a symbol of destroyed innocence and wasted potential. It is the first of Chekhov's four great late plays and perhaps the most personal.