Checking on Chekhov

All the world’s a stage, yes. But these days, there isn’t much going on at the theater. The word itself has come to mean more of a movie house than a place for stage drama as all eyes and ears seem to be glued on screens, from huge IMAX to tiny cell phone screens. The old theater has taken, well, the backstage.

Yet one local theater company (which by the way, operates, guerrilla style, without a home stage) dares to challenge this general lack of interest in live drama, unless by the term you mean a public scandal, like a lovers’ quarrel or hostage scene. It humbly calls itself  Little Boy Productions, but there’s nothing small or childish about their undertakings.

Aside from coming up with their own plays, the people behind Little Boy have also brought in some hugely successful plays from Manila through their contacts   with theater companies based there. These include Marcelino Agana Jr.’s “New Yorker in Tondo,” Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” Yasmina Reza’s “Art,” and interactive performances by the Manila-based group SPIT or Silly People’s Improv Theater.

Then, as part of their effort to cultivate budding thespians as well as to make public interest in the art of drama grow, they conduct summer workshops on acting, scriptwriting, directing, etc.

I have to admit I’m one of those whose eyes and ears are almost permanently glued to an electronic screen. Yet it was from the screen of my computer that I learned about Little Boy’s recent staging of Anton Chekhov’s one-act-plays, “The Boor” and “The Proposal.”

I read “The Boor” back in college along with other plays and short stories by this Russian physician-turned-playwright who wrote about the pretensions and decadence of the Russian aristocracy shortly before the Bolshevik revolution.

The satires were serious commentaries of the issues of his times, which had to do with the crumbling feudal system ruled by the Czars. These include the clamor for women’s rights, democracy, etc. And with the monarchs not easily giving way, the impatient Russian intellectuals and workers resorted to Molotov cocktails and machine guns. And the rest was history.

But this growing social unrest Chekhov narrated with lighthearted humor. “The Boor” and “The Proposal” exemplified his brand of romantic comedies, long before the genre became Hollywood’s bestselling movie formula.

“The Boor” tells the story of a young widow who falls in love with a rude landlord who came to collect her late husband’s debt. Using the same hilarious twists in the plot, “The Proposal” tells how an attempt to propose marriage by a gentleman ends up in a heated dispute over a piece of land, which is also claimed by the girl to whom he is proposing.

In the two plays, the characters are caught up with having to decide whether to act according to what is practical and socially acceptable or to be true to themselves, which often leads them to an insane situation.

Both were very short plays but in both cases, Chekhov’s dialogues convincingly showed how our words and actions can be like the layers of cloth and finery we use to cover our naked, true self. In this sense, manners betray the man—and yes, woman.

Such moral dilemmas make the plays universal. But the Philippines being still partly feudal and patriarchal, the audience could easily relate to the excesses and artificialities of the rich as well as to the absurd social decorum that demands women to be constantly demure.

Thanks to the cast’s skillful acting, the audience responded with  almost sustained laughter, the noise of attention. It’s the kind of attention you rarely find with screen entertainment.