DIRECTOR’S NOTES
BY ROSE RIORDAN
That title! So
Chekhovian for a
second – then Spike.
Wait. What is this?
Durang has a lot
of fun mixing
melancholy and
mayhem while riffing off these famous
characters. The perfect emphasis on
the joy of suffering.
While not belittling the most human
and obvious foibles, Durang does stick
a fork in them a few times.
Sibling rivalry (fork)
Jealousy (fork)
Regret (fork)
Lust (fork)
Love (fork)
Aging (FORK)
Resentment (fork)
Most who have siblings understand
the inherent tension of spending
time with them – especially if there
are lots of unresolved issues. This
story is centered on three siblings
who are forced to spend the weekend
together at the family home – owned
by one, lived in by the other two – fun!
Families are complicated and change
is not welcome! Change means time is
marching on! If things stay the same
then maybe we will too.
Beautiful people (FORK)
I hope you enjoy our “forking” around.
A VIEW FROM THE COUNTRY:
CHRISTOPHER DURANG ON VANYA AND
SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE
It’s safe to say that Vanya and Sonia and
Masha and Spike is one of the hottest
plays on American stages this season.
After winning the 2013 Tony Award for
Best New Play – along with a Drama
Desk Award for Outstanding Play and
the New York Drama Critic’s Circle
Award – it quickly became the mostproduced new play in America this
season.
During one of the many recent
productions on stages across the
country, playwright Christopher
Durang sat down with dramaturg
Danielle Mages Amato to muse about
his new hit play.
Q: Where did the idea behind this
play come from? Why Chekhov?
I lived in New York for 22 years, and in
1996, with my partner John Augustine,
I moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
We live on a little hill, overlooking a
pond, and a blue heron does come there.
My house, it’s a farmhouse, pretty and
a little quaint, and it made me think of
the Chekhov plays, like The Seagull and
Uncle Vanya, where the people who
live in the country are rather unhappy.
They feel that their lives are boring;
there’s no stimulation for them. Then
there are characters like the glamorous
actress Madame Arkadina in The
Seagull, who are wandering about living
in cities and being in plays and having
affairs. I suddenly realized that I was
now the age of the older characters in
Chekhov. I’d mostly seen and read the
plays in my 20s and 30s, and I certainly
had empathy for the older characters,
but they felt very distant from my
experience. And now I thought, “Oh my
gosh, I’m the same age as Uncle Vanya.”
(Actually, I went back and looked up
how old Vanya is in the play, and he’s
47! I’m a lot older than that. But aging
was different back then, and most of
the great actors who’ve played that role
are older.)
P 4 | PORTLAND CENTER STAGE VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE
Even though I was now the age of
Chekhov’s older characters, and I lived
in a place in the country, I realized that
I didn’t feel bitter in the way that the
Chekhov characters did – I’d been in the
city, and I actually wanted to get out of
the city. But I thought to myself: What
if I had only gone away from home
briefly, and I hadn’t pursued the things
that interested me? What if my fictional
sister and I had ended up taking care of
our parents through a very prolonged
illness, and so on. I realized it was a
“what if” play.
Q: What if you, yourself, had been a
character in a Chekhov play?
Yes – what if my real life had been
like one of those Chekhov characters.
Chekhov was a definite jumping-off
point for the play, but it’s very much
not a parody of Chekhov. I’ve done
parodies in the past, and this is much
more its own thing. And I did my very
best to write it so that you don’t have
to know Chekhov to respond to it.
I thought I was going to have much
more about unrequited love, which is
a theme that comes up in Chekhov so
much. But it became much more about
disappointment with how your life has
gone. That’s a theme that isn’t unique
to Chekhov. And it doesn’t sound like a
comedy at all. But it is a