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To use in Acting Classes, Auditions, 200X
"Small Chekhov": Wedding & More SummaryLetters of Anton Chekhov to his family and friends -- With a Biographical Sketch, Translated by Constance Garnett * eBooks@Adelaide 2004 Russian & Soviet Theatre (Rudnitzki) *Questions
Notes
UAF 2005 (Chekhov one acts) Costumes by Tara Maginnis *
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All three monologues by Vershinin are tricky, be careful, actor! Read the play and Chekhov's pages first.VERSHININ (laughs.) You know a great deal that is unnecessary! I don't think there can be a town so dull and dismal that intelligent and educated people are unnecessary in it. Let us suppose that of the hundred thousand people living in this town, which is, of course, uncultured and behind the times, there are only three of your sort. It goes without saying that you cannot conquer the mass of darkness round you; little by little, as you go on living, you will be lost in the crowd. You will have to give in to it. Life will get the better of you, but still you will not disappear without a trace. After you there may appear perhaps six like you, then twelve and so on until such as you form a majority. In two or three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, marvellous. Man needs tuck a life and, though he hasn't it yet, he must havea presentiment of it, expect it, dream of it, prepare for it; for that he must see and know more than his father and grandfather (laughs). And you are complaining of knowing too much?MASHA. In this town to know three languages is an unnecessary luxury! Not even a luxury, but an unnecessary encumbrance, like a sixth finger. We know a great deal that is unnecessary.
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