Chekhov on the American Stage
Chekhov on the American Stage

Summary/Abstract: Performing foreign plays is one of the notable and productive types of intercultural reception. The way foreign plays are staged allows us to judge how one nation perceives the other, as this process involves the work of the translator at the initial stage, the work of the stage group — director, actor, stage designer, composer — and the reaction of the audience during the performance. Among the variety of Russian authors staged in America, including Ostrovski, Gorki, Mayakovski, Andreyev, Bulgakov, Erdman and others, Chekhov definitely ranks first. Americans are very much taken up with Chekhov, whom they perceive as the most eloquent incarnation of the “enigmatic” Russian soul. Here we are confronted with several problems which are quite common when a foreign play is staged. These problems are similar to the ones emerging in the case of translating a work of foreign literature and basically can be summarized by the question: what is more important — to be as accurate as possible in relating the national color and the style of the original or to make the work sound natural and understandable for the home audience, so that it becomes part of its national culture. This is exactly what happened with Shakespeare in Russia.

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