Director's Notes - The Seagull

​I’ve been thinking a lot about ghosts this season, specifically theatrical ghosts. Before opening of HAMLET back in January I talked with the cast about the tradition we join as we perform and produce classic works. I told them to think back over all the great actors who had played those roles. THE SEAGULL is very much the same. When I think back over the actors who’ve taken on these mammoth roles, I’m drawn to the ghosts of those performances, each influencing the next as the play breaths with each new incarnation. From the time Konstantin Stanislavski remounted THE SEAGULL in 1898 at the Moscow Art Theatre, rebranding a resounding failure into what we now know as a masterpiece, this play has grown from the roots of its ancestors… Which is why, tonight, we find ourselves in a beaten and disheveled shell of an old theatre. Even though the characters in the play are living in their moments, at a lakeshore, or in the cold of a winter storm, the characters (in a much larger sense) are treading the boards for the umpteenth time and we are merely witnesses to their world. 
 
“For us our work isn’t about whether we write or act, it’s not the fame or the glory that matters, it’s the strength to endure.” (Nina, Act IV)