At the end of last school year, AFS theater director Kittson O’Neill announced that the spring play for the 2023-2024 theater season would be Three Sisters by Anton Chekov. Many students may have wondered what this show is and why Kittson chose it. Fast forward to now, and our production of Three Sisters is in full swing, with opening night roughly one month away.
Jessica Loney ‘24, dramaturg of the play, provides an overview of the history saying, “The characters in the show aren’t real but display what life was like from a female perspective in Russia at the time. One of the main themes of the show is the sisters desperately wanting to get out of their tiny depressing town and back to Moscow, where they grew up. The time period does serve for an interesting storyline because it’s right before World War I, which nobody knows is happening at this time.”
When asked about the discussion involved with choosing the play O’Neill said, “I picked Three Sisters…because it has a lot of really different interesting roles, and we have a lot of talented actors that are very different people… its story of hope and surviving disappointment, is something in particular that high schoolers who have survived Covid and many difficult things can relate to.”
O’Neill went into more depth about realism saying, “The drama of the play is in watching the people survive and handle the changes… which is so true to most of our lives. We don’t witness the big events that affect us, but we have to learn to survive them. It’s different from other shows because with Shakespeare’s productions, you are not speaking how you would in everyday life, and with musicals, there is a theatrical artifice to how the story is shown.”
When asked about whether performing Three Sisters with high school students, rather than with adults, has an impact on how people will view the show and understand the plot, O’Neill said, “A lot of Three Sisters is about age, about time passing, [and] many of the characters in the play are quite old…. I think that there is something about watching a play about time, about the choices you make and how that takes from you as you age; watching that with people who are about to go on that journey feels particularly beautiful and sometimes hard to watch.”
When asked about a summary of the show based on what they’ve seen, Loney said, “It’s a comedy hidden under a tragedy. It seems dramatic, but it’s actually really funny.”
Loney sums up the play in a few words saying,“[It’s] Carefree. At the moment, they’re on top of the world and have no clue what is about to happen in the next couple years.”
Three Sisters will take place on the Muller Stage after Spring break, premiering on April 18. Come and support the actors as they take us on a journey back in time to the Russian countryside during a period of war, innocence, and longing.
