The Cherry Orchard, OSF, 2007 . Photo by David Cooper.
Translating Chekhov
I discovered Chekhov’s plays when I was 16 years old and an English teacher in my junior year high
school class assigned us The Cherry Orchard to read. It was a revelation for me from the first
moment I picked it up. I still have difficulty understanding how a teenage girl could fall so madly in
love with this play about loss, memory and grief, but fall in love I did. And this was the start of a life-
long passion with all of Chekhov’s works.
I studied all the biographies and critical discussions I could find about Chekhov’s life and works,
literally feeling his presence in my life. I developed a reputation for being the three sisters—all of them
at one time. When I discovered that my penchant in the theater was for directing, I made it my
business to direct all of the plays, several times, including a few of the one-act farces. I have been
reading the stories all of my life and have taught Chekhov works in my acting and theater classes.
A page from the censor's copy of "The Seagull," Act III with edits.
Thus it seemed a natural progression when I had the opportunity to link up with a literal Russian to
English translator, Allison Horsley, and begin my journey as a translator/adaptor of Chekhov’s plays.
My first venture was with The Cherry Orchard —which seems an obvious choice as it rests in my
heart as my first love. Allison and I worked very harmoniously to produce the working draft which I
then took into rehearsal and directed with a superb cast of actors at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
From that first translation, I felt compelled to continue with all the major plays. Fortunately, the new
artistic director at OSF, Bill Rauch, agreed that something special was happening with these
translations and he commissioned me and Allison to continue on with as many plays as we had the
desire to do.
When there are so many translations available in American English, what makes our work so special?
Well, I believe a lifetime of studying and interpreting and “living with” A.P. Chekhov has made his
works an essential part of my being. I feel I “get” the plays deep in my soul. I think these translations
have a freshness of approach (I am a great believer in the idea that as the language changes in our
lives, new translations need to be developed every few years) and they are a merging of Chekhov’s
late 19th and early 20th centuries’ language with a contemporary 21st century idiom. Each play is
undoubtedly Chekhov’s but the translations put you into your own life at the present moment.
I feel that I have found that elegance and sparseness of language and the subtle yet profound, buried
passions of the characters that is Chekhov’s signature. The translations retain the Russian names as
Chekhov wrote them and also include the occasional Russian word so that while you are transported
to the period, place and time, the readers and producers of the plays are feeling the life of the
Chekhovian world in their own time.
A labor of love is absolutely the starting point for these translations.
- Libby Appel