Playing Petr

By Colin Haigh

Colin Haigh is interviewed in the rehearsal room.

Colin Haigh talks about playing Petr in The Seagull and reveals more about the character's regrets in life.

Playing Polina

By Catherine Cusack

Catherine Cusack is interviewed in the rehearsal room.

Catherine Cusack talks about her approach to playing Polina in The Seagull and reveals more about the most important relationship in the character's life.

Dan Rebellato’s 2010 play, Chekhov in Hell, opens with a quotation from Anton Chekhov, the Russian playwright and author who died in 1904. He says ‘you ask me what life is. That’s like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there’s nothing more to know’.

Playing Semyon

By Rudi Dharmalingam

Rudi Dharmalingam is interviewed in the rehearsal room.

Rudi Dharmalingam discusses the character of Semyon and his love for Masha.

Playing Yevgeny

By David Beames

David Beames discusses the character of Yevgeny Dorn and his place within Irina Arkadina's social circle in Chekhov's The Seagull.

Moscow Art Theatre

By Adam Rush

The Moscow Art Theatre at the end of 19th century.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko set about to reform Russian theatre. Their aim was to create a home for naturalism, in order to challenge melodrama’s dominance of theatre in Russia.

Playing Masha

By Jenny Rainsford

Jenny Rainsford is interviewed in the canteen of the Jerwood Space.

Jenny Rainsford discusses the character of Masha, her relationships with other characters and the way that she sees the world.

Playing Ilya

By John Elkington

The actor John Elkington is interviewed in the rehearsal room.

John Elkington discusses the character of Ilya and his relationship to the other characters in Chekhov's The Seagull.

Character Biographies

By the company

The Company of The Seagull. Photo: Tristram Kenton.

Discover more about the lives of the characters in Chekhov's The Seagull, as imagined by the company who play them.

Playing Yakov

By Eddie Eyre

Eddie is interviewed in the rehearsal room.

Eddie Eyre discusses the role of the character Yakov in Chekhov's The Seagull and his approach to playing him.

Modern Russian History Timeline

By Sarah Grochala and Adam Rush

Find out more about the times in which Chekhov lived and worked.

Playing Nina Zarechnaya

By Pearl Chanda

The actress Pearl Chanda is interviewed in the rehearsal room.

Pearl Chanda discusses her approach to playing the role of Nina and how the character has been re-imagined by the writer John Donnelly.

The Seagull's Two Premieres

By Sarah Grochala and Adam Rush

When Anton Chekhov’s classic The Seagull premiered on 17 October 1896 in St. Petersburg at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, it was a complete failure both in the audience’s, the critics’ and Chekhov’s own opinion. How then did a play initially booed by its audience become, as Konstantin Rudnitsky argues, ‘one of the greatest events in the history of Russian theatre and one of the greatest new developments in the history of world drama’?

Playing Boris Trigorin

By Gyuri Sarossy

The actor Gyuri Sarossy sits in the rehearsal room and talks about his approach to playing the character of Boris Trigorin.

Gyuri Sarrosy discusses the character of Boris Trigorin in Chekhov's The Seagull and explains his approach to playing him.

Blanche McIntyre on The Seagull

By TheatreVoice

Blanche McIntyre gives Judi Herman a director's-eye-view of The Seagull.

She discusses her collaboration wtih designer Laura Hopkins and her extraordinary staging of Chekhov's great exploration of artistic creativity, unrequited love and the clashes between the generations.

Who Was Anton Chekhov?

By Adam Rush

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia in 1860.He was the third child of six to Pavel Egorovich Chekhov, a grocer. His grandfather had been a serf, who had managed to buy his family’s freedom in 1841. During his childhood, the young Chekhov and his siblings worked in the family store and studied at their local school.

Rehearsal Diary - Week 5

By Jack Lowe

So we’re into week 5 and we’re all settling into the comfortable surroundings of the Nuffield Theatre Southampton. The set has been built and installed on stage so it’s time for tech rehearsals. This is when the actors get onto the set for the first time and the technical crew get a chance to rehearse the lighting and sound. The lighting and sound desks are out in the auditorium rather than hidden away in the lighting box. There are wires everywhere and there are countless calls from the various technical people that seem to be in a different language, which sounds like English, but it seems to be in a strange code. Phrases like "Put the SL Boom Base DS of the leg. Don't think we'll need an Iris, but you never know" might sound mystifying to the casual listener but they are clear as day to the technical crew.

The Seagull - Design Images

By Laura Hopkins

Explore Laura Hopkin's portfolio of design ideas for The Seagull.

The Seagull - Production Photographs

Photography: Tristram Kenton

Rehearsed Readings, Writing and The Seagull

By John Donnelly

The rehearsed reading gives the clearest sense yet of bodies on a stage – people – trying to do things to and get things from one another, rather than a series of talking heads showing off verbally. I do the voices a lot when I'm writing which gets you so far but hearing good actors, really good actors – as we had for the rehearsed reading of The Seagull – allows the play to emerge much more clearly. And this is terrifically exciting.

Dear Director

I have been thinking about water surfaces, and this reminded me of the boat sequence in Night of the Hunter; it's completely wrong, but something about it snagged me...

Rehearsal Diary - Week 4

By Jack Lowe

So what happens when the fragmented sections of rehearsals are pieced together for the first run through? Well. A collective gulp and then off we go…

Dear Designer

I'm raising something mad here. Is that even possible, let alone effective?!

Rehearsal Diary - Week 3

By Jack Lowe

So, an actor talking to the audience. It’s a slippery device in theatre. When done well, dissolving the fourth wall instantly asks the question: who are the audience meant to be? Are they a specific person (a priest being confessed to), a collection of different people (a jury) or merely ghosts in a forest that the character is talking to?

Reality and Depth

‘NINA This isn’t real. It’s a dream’

The artist David Johnson on the relationship between imagination and reality.

‘Reality is something we experience in the gut rather than the intellect, though what exactly we experience will slowly be modified by what we believe.’

The Seagull - First Read Through

Writer John Donnelly and director Blanche McIntyre talk about hearing actors read the script of The Seagull for the very first time.

Writer John Donelly and Director Blanche McIntyre give their response to hearing their new version of The Seagull read out by actors for the very first time.

Rehearsal Diary - Week 2

By Jack Lowe

There are so many things happening in the rehearsal room, it’s sometimes difficult to know what might be interesting for you folks to see. So to give you an overarching feel for week two, I’ll start with how I’m trying to use day-to-day observations to visualise the process.