In the play it may not be used in the most thrilling of ways, but hey, maybe that'll inspire an audience member or two to go follow their dreams. Three Sisters is all about our brief time on Earth and how we use that time.

It's the shining light in the future that keeps these sisters-and by extension, humanity-from being satisfied with the present.

In other words, what is the time, place, or condition you need to reach before your life can really begin? Is it losing thirty pounds? Moving out of your boring hometown? Finally getting the fly lady or fella in the back row to notice you? Graduating? What's your 'Moscow?' No, not the coldest place you've ever been. What is The Three Sisters About and Why Should I Care? But wouldn't it be nice to at least see the baron dying onstage? Come on, Anton. People are sitting at a table having dinner, that's all, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being torn apart' (source: Schmidt, intro to The Plays of Anton Chekhov). Chekhov didn't believe in suspenseful, action-movie playwriting.Ĭase in point: he once wrote 'What happens on stage should be just as complicated and just as simple as things are in real life. All of the flashy plot points are described, but happen offstage: a fire, multiple extramarital affairs, gambling, and the baron's death in a duel. Three Sisters also makes use of Chekhov's patented nothing-too-exciting-happens-onstage technique. Not to mention some good ol' Russian suffering. You've got human resistance to the passing of time and the search for meaning in existence. You've got your privileged class on the way down and bourgeois class on the way up. The play, written in 1900, includes most of Anton Chekhov's greatest thematic hits. They are educated and cultured, but living in a podunk town in the Russian countryside all of their romances are disasters and, by the end of the play, they've lost their money and their house. In the nutshelliest of nutshells, life kind of sucks for them right now. Three Sisters is a naturalistic (aka, believable, as far as twentieth-century Russia goes, anyway) portrait of the Prozorov sisters-Olga, Masha, and Irina-along with their brother Andrey.

Three sisters anton chekhov