Chekhov’s text as a text of life. The ‘anti-theatrical’ stage adaptation of The Seagull [Chayka] by the Hungarian director Árpád Schilling

Abstract

The article considers A. Chudakov’s idea about the significance ofanunfinished fabula in Chekhov’s works with regard to the theatrical practice of the Hungarian director Á. Schilling. According to Chudakov, Chekhov’s works without an unfinished fabula resemble an extract from the character’s life, selected at random. This randomness convinces the reader that the storyline is virtually unembellished poetically. The fabula and the plot of a short story or a play are carefully extracted from the ‘stream of existence,’ which is endless. Chudakov’s assessments of Chekhov’s poetics suggest that a theatrical specialist’s desire to remove the barriers between the stage of Chekhov’s plays and their audience represents a suitable approach to the playwright’s textual world. An appropriate example can be found in a staging of The Seagull [ Chayka] in Hungary in the early 21st c., namely, ÁrpádSchilling’s version in the Krétakör theatre. The author focuses especially on those artistic solutions found by Schilling that enable the aforementioned phenomenon of the vanishing boundaries, art’s expansion into life and, conversely, life’s expansion into art, to be realised during the performance.