"[The Grand inquisitor states:] The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for." (Fëdor Mikhailovich Dostoevski [1825-1881]), The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880), Book 5, Chapter 5.
Notes
"The recognition of the sanctity of the life of every man is the first and only basis for all morality." (Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi [1828-1910], The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893), 12, 3.
"Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things." (Fëdor Mikhailovich Dostoevski [1825-1881]), The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880), Book 6, Chapter 3.
"People should be beautiful in every way--in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts and in their innermost selves." (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov [1860-1904]), Uncle Vanya (1897), Act 1.
IRINA [lays her head on OLGA'S bosom]. A time will come when everyone will know what all this is for, why there is this misery; there will be no mysteries and, meanwhile, we have got to live . . . we have got to work, only to work! Tomorrow I'll go alone; I'll teach in the school, and I'll give all my life to those who may need me. Now it's autumn; soon winter will come and cover us with snow, and I will work, I will work.
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(Sample from the 3sis Forum) From: "Anatoly Antohin" Date: Thu Sep 23, 1999 5:29 am
Subject: [3sis] Re: Some random theories...(Hamster wheel a-turnin')
Imagine, she doesn't remember her mother, they say that your father is not your father. The three of them know it and didn't tell you? Solyony is shy, that's why I cast Shannon, he loud because she is shy and hates himself for being shy. To tell you about his love is the biggest event in his life. Irina is virgin? Solyony is virgin. Who do you think he killed? Brother out of mercy. Himself. They are all teenagers. How the two insecure teens in love behave? They do everything wrong. Every move has an immediate counter-reaction -- they hands meet, they take them back, they crave to look at each other eyes and hide their eyes.... everything seems to them wrong. Ask Solyony about his family. Is he an orphan like you?
Baron enjoys his memories of his childhood. How old is Solyony? Talk to him.
Anatoly
----- Original Message -----
From: fshlm@uaf.edu
To: 3sis@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 9:05 PM
Subject: [3sis] Some random theories...(Hamster wheel a-turnin')
Irina is like the little clay boy without a soul. She has a soul, but
she is empty from a lack of the ability to love. Face it, she did not
grow up with a loving household and love is mostly a learned ability,
much like language. What she can not get away from, however, are the
instinctual abilities that we have regardless. She is majorly lusting
after Solyony in a way that she can't put to words, because she's been
fairly well sheltered against things like this. She's been lied to for
various reasons all of her life. She lies to herself about Moscow and
finding true love, yadda, yadda. Like Anatoly said, Solyony tells the
truth and when you aren't used to it, it's a powerful drug. What I
want to know is why, if he loves her and she wants him so
mind-numbingly badly, why, why, why do they not end up together or at
least sleeping together. This is something I have to figure out for
her. Pourqoi, il est parti, sous la pluie, sans un mot, sans me
regarder. Literally, that means: Why is he gone, under the rain,
without a word, without looking at me. (God bless Jaques Prevert!!!)
Why the hell does she sit at the table with her head in her hands and
WHY does she carry the Baron's suicide note with her for the rest of
her life? Guilt is a really obvious reason for it, but there is
something else. A piece of paper with your guilt written on it can be
thrown away or burnt or lost, but it stays with her all the time. Even
when she later marries another officer. She doesn't have children
though. That's another funny thing. A woman of her station would have
been expected to bear children. She is not barren, either. I wonder if
it is because of her inability to love anyone. She and her future
husband have a very passionate love life, physically only. When the
revolution comes though, she, as the wife of the old regime, gets raped
repeatedly by soldiers of the other side. After this, she begins to
understand her sisters and why they hate her so much. She begins to
hate herself. When you open your mind to something, it all comes
rushing in at once until you're full. She has poisoned her mind
against herself. Eventually, she poisons her body too and dies at the
age of forty. She leaves no children behind her. I think that is
because, when she was raped, something bad happened to her, physically.
Yeah, that's why. She was sexually mutilated at some point. She
really truly becomes an empty vessel. Oi vey. So cheery, this all is,
eh? Maybe I'll go pull some teeth or hit my self really hard for fun
afterwards, eh? Just kidding. Any comments?
"I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor." (Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi [1828-1910], Memoirs of a Madman.
Homework
Use monologue pages in Acting, Method and Biomechanics directories. Select your monologue from The Three Sisters.
NB
The step from monologue to scene studies -- next.
"In time I came to understand that out of the misery and murk of their lives the Russian people had learned to make sorrow a diversion, to play with it like a child's toy; seldom are they diffident about showing their happiness. And so, through their tedious weekdays, they made a carnival of grief; a fire is entertainment; and on a vacant face a bruise becomes an adornment." (Maxim Gorki ["the bitter one"], pseudonym for Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov [1868-1936]), Autobiography (1913).
"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi [1828-1910], Anna Karenina (1875-1877), Part 1, Chapter 1: first sentence.
"That vague, crepuscular time, the time of regrets that resembles hopes, of hopes that resembles regrets, when youth has passed, but old age has not yet arrived." (Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev [1818-1883], (1862), Chapter 7.
theatre theory 
