Promotional material for Three Sisters Photo: Courtesy of Wuzhen Scenic Park

On the stage, four women wearing differently-styled black dresses sit in front of a table. The women, three of whom are sisters, recall their beautiful memories of their time in Moscow. They smile as they talk about their desire to return to the lovely city, which leads to the audience to think that perhaps their dream will come true.   

However, life is cruel. Irina, the youngest of the three sisters, waves her slender but powerful arms in the air to show her disappointment in her hopeless life. In the end, they never make it back to the city. 

This is a scene from the play Three Sisters by Russian director Yury Butusov. Debuting at the opening ceremony of the 7th Wuzhen Theater Festival on the evening of October 25, Three Sisters has captured the attention of the public due to not only its quality, but also that it marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Russia.

Fresh experience

Three Sisters, which explores the lives and dreams of Olga, Masha and Irina, is one of Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov's classic works. 

At four and a half hours in length, the play was a fresh experience to many of the Chinese in the audience.  

"Four and a half hours was a challenge to me since this is the first time in a long while that I've watched a drama. Some of my friends left before the end, and some of them were confused as to why certain lines were repeated by the protagonists again and again," Li Chen, a 26-year-old woman, told the Global Times on Saturday.

"Three Sisters is a long story. It might cause some difficulties in understanding if the audience has not read the script prior to seeing it. As a scriptwriter, I think Butusov interpreted the play very well, and I could see that he is trying to use his own style to salute the classics. For example, the daughters repeating the lines about their dead father represents their urgent desire to return to Moscow because that is where they grew up with their father," Liu Yong, a scriptwriter based in Beijing, told the Global Times. 

"I personally did not feel that the play was long at all. I think each drama has its own natural length, and so we cannot say a drama is good or bad based on length alone," said Stan Lai, one of the founders of the Wuzhen Theater Festival and an award-winning playwright and theater director. 

Butusov said in an interview at the festival that audiences should do their homework before watching the show as he feels it would take away from the work to have to explain its meaning to the audience in the theaters. In his opinion, there is no need for audiences to try and rush to understand the work. 

"It's like when you look at the sky, you may not grasp it all, but you cannot help but continue watching because it is very beautiful. This is the case with Chekhov, and it is important for everyone who loves to think about the work of Chekhov," he said.  

Adapting the classics

Three Sisters is not the only work from Chekhov that Butusov has directed, he has also directed works including The Seagull and Ivanov.

When directing classic dramas, including the works of Shakespeare, how to adapt them for modern audiences are questions that creators need to think about, Lai explained.

Butusov said that he started to rehearse the drama four years ago with a curiosity of exploring what women and men are. He thought the topic was of great significance. 

"I do not think the best stage play of Chekhov is in Russian because he belongs to the whole world. For centuries, theaters around the world have been playing his drama. I have seen a lot of marvelous stage plays in many countries like Germany and Poland. Although I have not had the chance to see the Chinese version, I believe China also has good Chekhov dramas since I think that Chekhov's work is very close to Eastern culture," said Butusov.

Lai said that it is very challenging to be true to the original work during creation while also adding one's own style to the finished production for the stage. He explained that only when a creator has a thorough understanding of a work can he or she have the ability to deconstruct these classics.  

He added that he feels Butusov is full of imagination, and that he managed to deconstruct and develop a completely different work based on a script that he is deeply familiar with. 

If the audience is familiar with Chekhov, they are still sure to enjoy the play because they will discover the performance is in keeping with the original text. 

"As a creator, we want to keep passing the essence of these classic plays down while also bestowing them a new meaning for a new era, and that is why we need to keep readapting the classics and show them on the stage," Lai said.
Newspaper headline: Hopeful dreams, bitter reality