Dramaturgical Dip: Lost in Translations

The plays of Anton Chekhov are translated and/or adapted into English more than any non-English playwright except perhaps Moliere and maybe Henrik Ibsen. The list of these translations and/or adaptations seems endless…I know because I have searched for months to find the right ones for The Classics Company.

Translation vs. Adaptation

Here is the difference between translation and adaptation. A translation is done by a Russian translator, steeped in both the language and the literature of Russia. To translate well is a distinct literary artform. An adaptation is written by a playwright who uses a translator’s “literal translation” to put Chekhov’s story into their own style. Most Chekhov plays that have been published in America and England are playwright-centered and not translator-centered. The many famous playwrights who have published versions of Chekhov include Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, David Mamet, David Hare, Brian Friel, Annie Baker, Heidi Schreck, Sarah Ruhl, Richard Nelson, Emily Mann, Stephen Karam, Madeline George…you get the picture. They go alongside others who are more translator than playwright such as Paul Schmidt, Robert W. Corrigan, Curt Columbus and Libby Appel. 

Here is what our translator, Kristin Johnsen-Neshati, says about the difference: 

“With a playwright’s adaptation of Chekhov, the real draw is that playwright’s take on a classic—not the classic itself. The adapter’s trademark voice and dramaturgical sense become paramount. If the playwright cuts, rearranges, or elaborates on scenes, this is acceptable because the new work is “adapted from,” “inspired by,” or simply “after” Chekhov.

For an audience wanting to hear a Chekhov play, however, the important thing is immediate access to Chekhov’s voice and vision. They need to leave with the feeling of having encountered the work of the playwright himself. To this audience, the artistry of the translator is unimportant—and often undistinguishable from the author’s—as long as it doesn’t impede the artistry of the original. The Chekhov translator doesn’t cut, edit, rearrange or elaborate, but provides a seemingly hollow reed through which the music of the original may be heard.”

It's always seemed to me that when playwrights run dry of original stories, they turn to adapting Chekhov to sharpen their craft. I guess that’s a compliment to Anton, right? They don’t really believe that they are going to write an improved version, do they?

Which leads us to my asking Kristin if we could license her translations for our inaugural season. I found her in a book of Chekhov critical essays by Rickard Gilman. He had used Kristin’s translation of The Seagull for his essay and loved her approach. I reached out to her, she sent all her translations, and I agreed with Gilman that her treatments were clear and unadorned. She told the story in a straight-ahead fashion without a personal style. She allows the actors and director to inhabit the Chekhovian world and make it their own. Now we won’t get “lost” in a translation. 

Below are excerpts from relevant remarks Kristin made when sitting on a panel of translators. I think you’ll agree with her perspective. Enjoy!

“Since language is on the move, translations have a limited shelf life. A good translator acknowledges this and strives to find the most immediate and accessible way to bring the original to today’s audiences. It’s the question of how best to do this that fuels continual debate. The translator should be attuned to today’s zeitgeist as expressed in the target as well as source languages. They must consider the tones and rhythms of contemporary speech and be able to find variations, such as verbal tics, regionalisms, and verbal patterns not identical—but equivalent—to those of the source text. Learning a new language makes you hear your mother tongue with the ears of a stranger. Only when I had to translate the Russian word chudnaya—an adjective that, in this context, means both miraculous and beautiful—did I realize how many English words I had taken for granted that combine exectly these meaning: wonderful and marvelous are just two examples. A translator must be able to think at times as a psychologist, an anthropologist, or sociologist to discover what a character is hiding or revealing by using one word and not another, why a character uses passive and not active voice, or speaks in short, germanic bursts instead of latinate abstractions. […]

Through the exercise of translation itself—the making of a thousand tiny decisions—each translator discovers an emerging “voice” for a new and distinct contribution to the field. I set out to create fresh and playable American translations that would make the rhythms and habits of 19th-century provincial Russia accessible to our audiences. I wanted my translations to mirror Chekhov’s economy, wit, and music.  I strove to make the imagery resonate and the language sing. But I didn’t know all that until I was nearly finished translating four of Chekhov’s plays.”

---

Kristin Johnsen-Neshati is Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs & International Programs for George Mason University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. She is also Professor of Theater for Mason’s School of Theater, where she has taught translation and adaptation, dramatic criticism, theater history, dramatic literature, and dramaturgy since 1993. 

Kristin founded and co-directs 1,001 Plays, an international 10-minute play exchange for students, with Nicholas Kfoury Horner. She produces and co-moderates Kritikos, a reading group that examines American society, the arts, and anti-Black racism with curator and head moderator, Jessica Kallista from CVPA’s School of Art. 

As a professional dramaturg, she served on the staff of Theater of the First Amendment for 18 years, where she focused on new play development for professional and student playwrights. She has translated four of Chekhov’s plays, which have been produced at George Mason University, SUNY Stony Brook, University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, and Washington College. 

Grants and awards include Virginia Humanities, George Mason’s Anti-Racist and Inclusive Teaching Grant, LMDA’s 2022 Innovation Grant, George Mason’s Fenwick Fellowship, Fairfax County’s Strauss Fellowship, KC/ACTF Criticism Fellowship and a Fulbright research grant for work in Egypt. Research interests include international theater collaboration, and new play development and theater practice in Iran, Egypt and Sudan. Education: Swarthmore College (BA, Russian and Theater); Yale School of Drama (MFA, DFA, Dramaturgy & Dramatic Criticism). 

Kristin is delighted to be working with Artistic Director Mark Cuddy and his colleagues for the inaugural season of The Classics Company.

Dramaturgical Dip: Three Sisters

2026 Season

Cover art by Adolf Marks, St Petersburg 1901

Three Sisters is one of Anton Chekhov’s most celebrated plays, first performed in 1901. A common complaint from contemporary audiences accustomed to plot driven plays, movies, and TV shows is that nothing ever happens in Chekhov. This is because Chekhov creates theatrical poetry. A play like Three Sisters has its own geometry that uncovers its chain-of-events, its ideological orientation, its characters but does so beneath the surface by presenting us with the cycles of the seasons, and the continuous movement from day through night that defines our daily lives, not their exceptional moments.

The story takes place over three and a half years in a family home and follows the lives of four siblings after the death of their father, a Colonel. The youngest sister, Irina, is hopeful and idealistic, while Masha, the middle sister, struggles in an unhappy marriage. Olga, the eldest, has accepted a life of responsibility and duty, and their brother Andrei’s poor choices lead to financial ruin for the family.

At its heart, the play explores the siblings’ longing to escape their stifling small-town existence and return to the vibrant city they left years earlier. Packed with emotional intensity and dramatic events, including love affairs, a devastating fire, and a fatal duel, Three Sisters remains a profound exploration of family, unfulfilled dreams, and the passage of time. As their society rapidly changes around them Chekhov’s characters try to find the truth of the human heart. Its impact on modern theatre and enduring relevance make it one of the most significant works in theatrical history. 

The Stage is Now: May 2025

And so, the artistic process begins.

On April 28–30, we held First Auditions for dozens of actors at the Multi-use Community Cultural Center. They each had prepared a memorized monologue of their choosing that displayed honest and transparent realism—keys to acting Chekhov. While I knew many of the actors from seeing them on local stages, there were quite a few nice surprises. Our mission drew people who are as excited about creating classical theatre as I am. We now move to Callbacks on May 12–14, when I have assigned roles and scenes for them to perform, matching up actors in each scene. (Actors can be cast in 1, 2, or 3 of the plays.) Over 40 actors will audition for over 45 roles across 3 plays in those 3 days. Quite a matrix of talent!

Plus, we have begun a forward-looking collaboration with Nazareth University’s Acting and Musical Theatre Programs. On April 27th and May 2nd, I auditioned students on campus for our 2026 Season. While their own productions come first, these programs have more talented students than they can cast so the faculty has embraced this opportunity. You’ll see some Naz faces throughout the 2026 Season, and we will hopefully continue to build upon this partnership.

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is “Why did you choose Chekhov for your first season?”

I have to tell you that I did not deliberate at all among the great playwrights I could have chosen. It was a quick decision. Not because I had deep familiarity with his plays: though I have seen many of them, I had only produced one back in Sacramento and I hadn’t directed any. Perhaps that’s why he was a natural choice—I felt the need to be immersed in his work. Primarily, I love his characters. Each one is indelible and alive with specificity and intention despite the chaos around them. I do know that actors love playing Chekhovian personae as they offer limitless layers to explore. His plays aren’t driven by plot as much as by the complexities of human behavior, with all the passion and folly we act out in our daily lives. There are no heroes or villains in Chekhov plays, only flawed humans that make up the multi-generational families we see gathered in country houses. 

I also had a rare summer in 1971 when, as a precocious sixteen-year-old dedicated to a future career in the theatre, I became an underage apprentice at the Falmouth Playhouse on Cape Cod. I lived on the property in a sort of barracks with the other older apprentices. We worked morning, noon, and night, six days a week, across all of the technical positions of a professional company. This was traditional summer stock, a new show every week, and a time when the stars still went out on tour. I mean, we had Sandy Dennis in And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little, Eleanor Parker in Forty Carats, Van Johnson in There’s A Girl In My Soup…you know, standard light summer fare.

However, we also had Faye Dunaway in Shaw’s Candida and the married couple, Rip Torn and Geraldine Page, performing three Chekhov one-acts…! In summer stock! Elmore Rual “Rip” Torn Jr. directed himself and Ms. Page in The Bear, The Proposal, and The Wedding. What I remember most from that week is that Mr. Torn kept rehearsing the plays after opening night. I was running the lighting control board that week, so I could see them rehearse from my vantage point, off stage left. That stuck with me. Here they were, doing summer stock on Cape Cod, and they cared about their craft enough to take their artistry seriously.

So I guess I’ve been a fan of digging into the works of Anton Chekhov for almost fifty-four years.

Last month, I wrote that I’d have more information about our annual fund and season subscriptions in May.

We will be opening up season subscription sales to our “Pantheon” donors for pre-sale on August 1st. On September 1st, we will open up sales to the general public. Why is this timeline important? With our limited performance schedule, there will be only 10 performances with tickets on sale in advance. (We’ll have an 11th as a $10 pay-at-the-door night.) The venue can hold about 75 people, so we will sell only 70 tickets per performance and keep 5 seats for emergencies. Because we don’t want all the seats to be subscribed and have some people miss out, we will put a cap of 50 subscription seats per performance and no more than 350 subscribers in total. It’ll be a select audience! Don’t worry, I’ll remind you of all this during the summer.

Classically Yours,

Here’s a little preview of another play in our inaugural season. The hits just keep on coming!

Dramaturgical Dip: The Cherry Orchard

Dramaturgical Dip: The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard — 2026 Season

Chekhov writes in great sweeps of fly-on-the-wall action which unfold in real time with large gaps of time between them. His four acts of The Cherry Orchard cover four key moments, from May until October, in the downfall of the Ranevskaya family estate.

The play opens at 2 am one May morning, when Madame Ranevskaya returns from Paris as the whole estate is up for auction in August if they do not raise money to pay the interest on their mortgage. Ranevskaya left five years earlier following the deaths of her husband and young son. She has travelled abroad to France, where she has been involved with a ne’er-do-well who has drained her financially. She returns with her daughter, Anya, to her estate that is managed by her foolish older brother, Gaev, and adopted daughter, Varya. A local businessman and family friend, Lopakhin—the son of a serf and a prospective suitor to Varya—is there to meet them with a plan to save them financially: sell the land off piecemeal to developers who will build holiday cottages for the rising middle-class. This plan would involve demolishing the house and chopping down their beloved Cherry Orchard, so large it has its own entry in the Russian encyclopedia. This plan is scoffed at by Ranevskaya and Gaev, and thus sets in motion months of uncertainty for Lopakhin and the family.

About Late 19th Century Russia

Anton Chekhov was born in 1860. The four mature plays on which Anton Chekhov’s fame as a playwright rests are: The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1897), Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1903). Chekhov died in 1904. These final two decades of Chekhov’s life and art, during which he wrote his principal works, were ones of extreme governmental oppression in Russia. 

In 1861, Czar Alexander II freed the serfs, an act comparable to our own Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, ushering in a brief period of freedom of expression, even as the Russian Empire continued its expansion into the Caucasus, Turkistan, and East Asia. In 1866, there was an attempt on Czar Alexander II’s life, and he became increasingly conservative, with the state becoming more oppressive. This led in the 1870s to a movement of young intellectuals who went out into the countryside to “infiltrate among the people”, share their lives, educate them, and attempt to activate discontent along revolutionary lines. Alexander II’s assassination in 1881 spawned a period of reaction under Alexander III and Nicholas II, the last Russian Czar, during which they both tried to root out terrorism in their midst.

Meanwhile, the Emancipation of the Serfs meant the land-owning class went into rapid decline as new industrialists rose to power, and both peasants and former serfs flocked to the cities for work in the factories. Dangerous working conditions and appalling living conditions fomented labor unrest that a government, still operating as if over a semi-feudal economy, was ill-equipped to handle, and in which the Russian aristocracy tried to maintain its position in a world where it was increasingly irrelevant. This is the background of Chekhov’s major works: a world of changing values, of great social and spiritual stress.