>>PREVIEW
PICKING UP CHEKHOV
Alberta Theatre Projects
playRites Festival
Written by Mansel Robinson
Runs January 26 to March 4
Martha Cohen Theatre
(Epcor Centre)
One of the benefits of the PlayRites festival is the process that a play goes through to arrive at its final destination. The playwright, director, dramaturge, actors and technicians all get to sit with a work, in one form or another, for an extended period of time before a full production of it hits the stage of the Martha Cohen Theatre.
For Mansel Robinson and his new play, Picking Up Chekhov, that process has lasted a little longer than usual.
Going back five years to some initial notes – from which Robinson admits almost nothing has survived in the final version – to the first public reading that took place in Saskatchewan a couple of years ago, this play has enjoyed a slow evolution, and one that its director, D.D. Kugler, has also been involved in. Robinson points out that, while working on a play with the same director for a long period of time is not a common experience, it’s beneficial in refining it.
"You’re swimming through darkness and trying to find out what the story really is," says Robinson. "Vanessa (Porteous, the production dramaturge) says (Kugler and I) have a shorthand that allows us to make certain decisions fairly quickly. It’s a relationship. It’s not just about the work, it’s about how we can talk to each other and understand each other."
With family at its core, Picking up Chekhov revolves around relationships, both conventional and mysterious, established and innocent. A mother listens patiently and nervously as an investigator provides her with the details of a road trip between her daughter, her soon-to-be ex-husband and a hitchhiker named Chekhov. Witnesses provide their observations, speculations and perceptions of the precise yet haphazard events that occur between departure and journey's end – Chekhov's hometown – where a young stranger awaits. An absorbing tale that starts at the finish, Robinson’s play is filled with apprehension, humour and violent wit.
"One of those things that started to emerge from all of those voices (in the play) was that they all had a story to tell of their own," says Robinson, who reveals a fondness for the ordinary nature of his witness characters.
"Again, one thing I like about the theatre is that (it’s) a community – and not just the actors, techs, writers and stuff, but the audience as well. And we watch it as a community and so there’s something nicely socialist about that that I respond to."
Robinson experienced controversy earlier in his career when he was essentially fired during the development of his piece Spitting Slag at Toronto’s Canadian Stage Company because the theatre administration felt that the material was inappropriate for its intended audience. His other plays, including Downsizing Democracy, The Heart As It Lived (produced at ATP’s 1997 playRites Festival) and Collateral Damage, are connected to politics or cohabit with political thoughts, Robinson’s idea of what comprises a political piece of theatre differing slightly from the common definition.
"I think all plays are political because they’re all based on a value system or a value judgment or a set of priorities," he says. "But what has been considered a political play is (one in which) you deal with characters with left-wing ideas or working-class characters."
Sometimes our need to categorize art can marginalize it and the artists who are creating it. While theatre is no exception, Robinson points out that you can be more obvious about its politics depending on where a play is set and how its ideas are presented. Ultimately, though, it goes back to relationships and reflecting those larger interactions we have as citizens of a society in the more intimate associations with our friends and neighbours.
"I like writing about power," says Robinson. "I tend to locate it, or start it, in the family, which is a power structure as well. Where I get grumpy about that marginalization is (when) certain critics don’t really listen to the characters, they think that it is only the playwright using them as mouthpieces, and I think that’s an easy way not to deal with the ideas, emotions or story at hand. At the same time, I like it because I like writing openly about politics. It’s fun and you’ve always got characters you disagree with and those are the most fun to write about, because they’re always coming up with better arguments. It’s a nice struggle."
Picking Up Chekhov is captivating in the way it presents and challenges the notions of family and home. "This one doesn’t feel like a political play to me, except there’s a bunch of so-called nobodies in it who are important and they can’t and shouldn’t be dismissed," says Robinson. "There’s something political about that. It starts to stretch the way the word has been used." |
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