The son
Constantine
A struggling artist making work nobody wants yet, in the shadow of a mother who dominates every room she enters.
Global Mosaic Foundationpresents
SEAGULL
“Everyone here loves so strongly in the wrong direction.”
Not a production of Chekhov. A room with these people in it.
Derek Wilson, who made this adaptation, recalls being told the difference between how audiences talk about Chekhov. Outside Russia, they say: let’s go see that production of The Three Sisters. A Russian audience is more likely to say: let’s go see how those sisters are doing.
That is the distinction this production is built on. The intention is not to give a New York audience another Chekhov performed at them, but to put them in a room with these characters for two hours.
The adaptation
A comedy, as Chekhov insisted it was.
The play opens on two people failing to understand one another, and it keeps failing, on purpose. Masha is watching and yearning for Constantine. Constantine is elsewhere, setting up his art. Simon is in love with Masha, who is in mourning — not for anyone, but for her life.
The adaptation takes place in our time and somehow also in Chekhov’s. A star refuses the offer of a lift into town on the grounds of what it would look like to be seen in a Toyota Corolla. The comedy is exact, and it is never at the characters’ expense.
The people in the room
The mother
Irina
A successful actress who floats into the space and holds it, with her younger and very successful writer-lover in tow.
The muse
Nina
A young actress who dreams of a life on the stage and of being a positive influence on the world.
The writer
Boris
Successful, celebrated, and candid about his own struggles with the work — which is precisely how he draws people in.
In mourning
Masha
In mourning for her life. In love with Constantine, who does not see her.
The doctor
Eugene Dorn
The most grounded and satisfied of them, wandering in and out with a guitar and small pieces of advice — until he admits to a dream of his own he never reached.
The uncle
Peter
An older man who is not well, and who yearns for a life he never lived.
Hopeful
Simon
In love with Masha, and not following.
The staging
Everything present and alive in the room with us.
There is no stage lighting. Every light is a floor lamp or a table lamp, switched on and off by the actors. All music is made by the actors, many of whom are musicians. Every sound — a dog barking somewhere in the distance — is made in the room.
The set is a large spring-green area rug and small woven stools, reminiscent of lawn furniture. The intended space is a vintage furniture showroom: an intimate room full of old things. Objects with stories. History. Life.
Everyone here loves so strongly in the wrong direction.
The partnership
A co-production, and a division of labour.
Brindle Dog Theatre Company and Global Mosaic Foundation are co-producing SEAGULL, working together toward a New York presentation.
Brindle Dog Theatre Company leads the artistic life of the work.
Global Mosaic Foundation joins as institutional co-producing partner, carrying the producing and fundraising infrastructure around it through Fragments of Brilliance.
Further production details to follow.
The company
SEAGULL is the inaugural production of Brindle Dog Theatre Company, a New York company formed to produce new works and new adaptations of older ones. The play was performed as a staged reading, and the cast and director have been largely in place since.
The company is building a profit-sharing model, so that actors, designers and crew take a percentage of the box office, and a pay-it-forward ticket, so that patrons who can pay more can cover seats for artists who cannot. The intention is to bring other New York companies into the same scheme.
Support this Fragment of Brilliance
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