Intterrrview.

Yannick Legault’s interview with Wajdi Mouawad (He just directed The Three Sisters at the international Chekov Festival)
– What and who does Chekhov want his characters to reconcile with?
– With the failure of their own lives. He wants to develop the sense of humor that helps them laugh at themselves and at their ridiculous habit of believing that happiness is possible while in point of fact being wrong about everything, first and foremost about love.
– Are Chekhov’s characters capable of provoking additional social enmities and if so, what kind of enmities are they?
– Possibly there was a time when they could. But not anymore, after the great ideals have fallen into oblivion. It is impossible nowadays to take an aristocrat seriously. There was the time when the conflict between Natasha and Irina was possible. But not today. There are no Irinas left, only the Natashas and even they are not quite the same as before. The Natashas of today are those who have forgotten who they were and consider themselves to be Irinas. Their men are ugly and bad-mannered and they are greedy for material wealth – posh cars, stylish telephones and money. Their wardrobes are exhibitions of bad taste which is especially perilous as bad taste and humor are incompatibles.
– Would it be fair to say that politically Chekhov is close to you and if so what is the nature of this closeness?
– Chekhov is close to me due to his bonds with nature, his attitude toward human misery. I think in this sense Chekhov developed some kind of responsiveness that I find absolutely amazing.
– Chekhov is often classed as an insurgent in theatre in much the same way as some of his characters, Petya Trofimov for instance, are labeled revolutionaries. Do you agree with such interpretations?
– I believe he invented his own orchard, the kind of orchard that didn’t exist before him. In my opinion there have been four orchards in the Western theatre: those of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov and Beckett. Chekhov’s orchard is inhabited by ordinary people sharing the existential emptiness and confronted with mediocre milieu. Having nothing better to do, they are laughing at all this through tears. And this is a truly revolutionary orchard. Chekhov depicts the tragedy of mere mortals. They are no longer kings or queens. They are just people.