The Seagull

The plot of Chekhov's play has been fully transposed to the world of theatre. Not only Dom is an 'actor' instead of a doctor, all the characters are linked with theatre. They are either actors (Trigorin, Masha, Sarin, Dom, Polina Andreyevna) or technical staff (the administrator of the farm Shamrayev becomes the theatre driver who has an argument with Arkadina about the company car rather than about horses), Medvedenko is a director. And since the rural mansion has quite naturally been transformed into a focal theatre, the creators of the Nitra production have been provided with an opportunity to play 'ourselves' not only in the general philosophical sense, but in a very specific sense – about own feelings and experience from working in a regional theatre.

The production by Sprušanský makes visible some conflictual or otherwise problematic relationships among the characters which in Chekhov's text only exist as a mild allusion or in the form of unfulfilled possibilities. The circumstances and environment of the story thus become rougher, and the edges sharper. "To live! To act!" sounds like a chorus at various points of the Nitra production and this desire agitates not only Nina, but a/so the whole lost theatre community.