Chekhov always had the best of opinion about military men, especially those in active service, for they, in his own words, were to a certain extent the bearers of a cultural mission, since, coming into the farthest corners of the provinces, they brought with them new demands on life, knowledge, art, happiness, and joy. Chekhov least of all desired to hurt the self-esteem of the military men. (MLIA)
The men of Chekhov do not bathe, as we did at that time, in their own sorrow. Just the opposite: they, like Chekhov himself, seek life, joy, laughter, courage. The men and women of Chekhov want to live and not to die. They are active and surge to overcome the hard and unbearable impasses into which life has plunged them. It is not their fault that Russian life kills initiative and the best of beginnings and interferes with the free action and life of men and women. (MLIA)
In talking and acting so that the spectator does not understand either the words or the problems of the actors, all that the actor really accomplishes is the letting down and lowering of the interest of the spectator in the performance and the general tone of his spiritual state of being. (MLIA)
To heighten tone means to heighten the mood of the audience, to strengthen the interest of the spectator in the performance; to quicken tempo means to live more strongly and intensively and to live over all that one says and does on the stage. (MLIA)
The prevalent mistake of beginning stage directors and actors is that they think that the heightening of tone is the quickening of tempo; that playing in full tone is loud and quick talking and strained action. But the expressions the “heightening of tone,” “full tone,” “quickening of tempo” have nothing to do with the actor and all with the spectator. (MLIA)
The work of stage direction began. As was the custom I wrote a detailed mise en scène,—who must cross to where and why, what he must feel, what he must do, how he must look. . . . (MLIA)
Chekhov was most enthusiastic about Hauptmann’s “Lonely Lives.” He saw it for the first time and he liked it more than any of his own plays. (MLIA)
The Chekhov mood is that cave in which are kept all the unseen and hardly palpable treasures of Chekhov’s soul, so often beyond the reach of mere consciousness. The cave is that vessel in which is hidden the great riches of Chekhov. One must know how to find the place where it is hidden. (MLIA)
There are plays written on the simplest of themes, which in themselves are not interesting. But they are permeated by the eternal, and he who feels this quality in them perceives that they are written for all time.
Chekhov is a writer of such plays. (MLIA)
Everyday cares, politics, economics, the larger part of general social interests—these make the kitchen of life. Art lives higher, observing from the height of its birdlike flights all that takes place beneath it. It makes concrete and synthesizes all that it sees. (MLIA)