Academic Studies Press Checking out Chekhov: A Guide to the Plays for Actors, Directors, and Readers (Companions to Russian Literature Series)

<p>Theatres world-wide embrace Chekhov's handful of plays with a fervour second only to Shakespeare's. Whatever their native language or culture, audiences often see themselves in his Russian characters, making Chekhov seem an author who easily transcends his own culture and time. Nonetheless, students, actors, and audiences alike are often initially puzzled by Chekhov's dramatic texts. Are they comic or tragic, ironic or sincere, starkly familiar or willfully elusive? How can his often seemingly irrelevant dialogue create dynamic performances? In his stories and plays alike, Chekhov challenges his readers to diagnose his characters' desires, opinions, heartaches and joys in the same way that doctors diagnose illness by attending closely to apparently trivial details. In the plays where narrative voice is absent and characters speak for themselves reading under a microscope becomes all the more necessary. The expert attention that Carnicke pays to the performative dimensions of Chekhov's plays makes her book unique among the published guides to Chekhov's works. </p> Review “A strong background in Russian language and culture, combined with professional theater experience as an actress and director, prepared Sharon Carnicke not only to translate Chekhov’s plays for performance but also to illuminate the mysteries of his works for theater artists preparing to stage the plays. Certainly it is actors and directors who have the most to gain from this ‘guide to the plays,’ which also serves as an intelligent introductory study for general readers. Carnicke covers the basics—transliteration, how Russian names are used, capsule biography, late nineteenth-century theatrical genres—while offering enough fresh insight into Chekhov’s world and his work to hold the interest of those already familiar with the plays.” —Felicia Hardison Londré , University of Missouri–Kansas City. Review published in The Russian Review, January 2014 (Vol. 73, No. 1) About the Author Sharon Marie Carnicke (PhD Columbia University) is currently professor and associate dean of theatre at the University of Southern California, where she also holds a joint appointment in Slavic languages and literature. Her translations of Chekhov's plays have been produced by theatres nationwide to public acclaim. Their publication as <em>Chekhov: 4 Plays and 3 Jokes</em> prompted her nomination for the National Translation Award by the American Literary Translators Association in 2010. Her ground breaking book, <em>Stanislavsky in Focus</em> is now in its second edition. Her other publications include <em>The Theatrical Instinct</em>, a study of the eccentric playwright/director Nikolai Evreinov (Peter Lang), and the co-authored book, <em>Reframing Screen Performance</em>.