The Cherry Orchard

Study Guide

The Cherry Orchard Study Guide

Artists Repertory Theatre April 22, 2011 May 22, 2011
By Anton Chekhov, Adapted by Richard Kramer
Directed by Jon Kretzu

Synopsis:
The Cherry Orchards central characters return to their ancestral home and its most beloved
feature the cherry orchard on the eve of its sale at auction to pay the delinquent mortgage.
Ghostlike and ethereal, this striking new adaptation is a unique and avant-garde fantasia on the
storys themes of the rising bourgeois and the fall of aristocracy.
This production completes Artists Reps Chekhov Project. The company has commissioned new
adaptations for three of the playwrights four major plays. Adapters include Joseph Fisher (The
Seagull), Tom Wood (Vanya), and Tracy Letts (Three Sisters). Vanya had its world premiere at
The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta. Artists Rep produced the United States premiere.

Whos Who:

The family

SISTER

BROTHER

Ruby Andreyevna Ranevsky

Varya (adopted)
The Landed Gentry
Leo Andreyevitch Gayev
Ruby Andreyevna
Ranevsky
-Varya (adopted)
-Anya
-Grisha (deceased)

Anya

Merchant Class
Yermolay Lopakhin,
merchant
Boris Pischik, landowner
Peter Trofimov, a student

In Richard Kramers production:

Lubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya is Ruby Andreyevna Ranevskaya
Leonid Andreyevitch Gaev is Leo Andreyevitch Gayev
Ermolai Alexeyevitch Lopakhin is Yermolay Lopakhin
Boris Borisovitch Simeonov-Pischin is Boris Pischik
Simeon Panteleyevitch Epikhodov is Simon Yepikidoff

Leo Andreyevitch Gayev

Grisha (deceased)
Serving Class
Firs, an old footman
Dunyasha, a maidservant
Simon Yepikidoff, a clerk
Yasha, a young footman
Charlotta, a governess

Background/Context of the Play:

In the news:

The State of Russia:

This year Russia observes the

150th anniversary of the
Emancipation Manifesto,
which liberated millions of
serfs. The manifesto,
proclaimed by Tsar
Alexander II on February 19,
1861, reportedly influenced
United States President
Abraham Lincolns
Emancipation Proclamation
in 1863.

According to the census of 1857 the number of private

serfs was 23.1 million out of 62.5 million Russiansthat is
37.7% of the population. Serfdom evolved from agricultural
slavery of the Roman Empire and spread through Europe
around the 10th Century. A serf is a laborer who is bound to
the land. Serfs differed from slaves in that serfs were not
property themselves and could not be sold apart from the
land on which they worked. Serfdom was dominant during the
middle ages. In England, serfdom lasted up to the 17th
Century, and in France until 1789. The last European country
to abolish serfdom was Russia, in 1861. With the
emancipation, serfs on private estates and household serfs were given the rights of free
citizens. The manifesto stipulated that farm peasants would be able to buy land from their
landlords. Household serfs, however, gained their freedom but no landone of several reasons
emancipation did not solve the problem of peasant unrest.

100
50
% of nobles in
landowner families

0
1861

1895

1912

In the 1870s the gentry still owned one-third of all arable land, but by 1905 its share had
declined to 22 percent, of which one-third was rented to the peasantry. Few landowners had
any grasp of agriculture or accounting and many of them spent long periods away from their
estates, often leaving their affairs in the hands of corrupt or incompetent managers. Many of
these estates then fell to bankruptcy. In The Cherry Orchard the responsibility is shared
between the 24 year-old adopted daughter Varya and the clerk Yepikidoff.
By 1903, almost one-half of all private land in Russia (excluding peasant land) was
mortgaged, forcing the landed gentry to sell their estates and join the professional or
commercial classes, as Leo does at the end of this play.

Production History:
The next play I write will definitely be funny, very funny at least in intention.
Anton Chekhov
Letter to Olga Knipper
March 7, 1901
This play is neither the comedy nor farce you said you wrote it is a tragedy, no matter the
escape to a better life you open up in the last act. I wept like a woman when we read it I tried
to stop myself, but I couldnt control myself.
Konstantin Stanislavsky
Letter to Chekhov
October 22, 1903
The play opened on January 17, 1904, the playwright's birthday, at the Moscow Art
Theatre under the direction of legendary actor/director Konstantin Stanislavsky. Famously
contrary to Chekhovs wishes, Stanislavskys version was, by and large, a tragedy. Chekhov
disliked the Stanislavsky production intensely, concluding that Stanislavsky had ruined his
play. During rehearsals, the entire structure of Act Two was re-written (to include the passerby and the twang from the string dying away). The Moscow Arts Theatre rehearsed it for only
six months, unlike their usual practice to rehearse for 18 months, or even more. In contrast,
plays in most American Regional theaters today rehearse from periods between four to six
weeks.
Productions of Note

The modest and newly urbanized audiences attending pre-revolutionary performances

at S. V. Panins Peoples House in Saint Petersburg reportedly cheered as the cherry
orchard was felled onstage.
A 1925 production at the Oxford Playhouse by J. B. Fagan and a 1934 production at the
Sadlers Wells Theatre in London, directed by Tyrone Guthrie and translated by Hubert
Butler, were among the first English-language productions of the play.
A production directed by Peter Hall, translated by Michael Frayn (Noises Off) and
starring Dorothy Tutin as Ranevskaya, Albert Finney as Lopakhin, Ben Kingsley as
Trofimov and Ralph Richardson as Firs, appeared at the Royal National Theatre in
London in 1978 to nearly universal acclaim.
In 1981, renowned director Peter Brook mounted a production in French with an
international cast including Brooks wife Natasha Parry as Ranevskaya, Niels Arestrup as
Lophakin and Michael Piccoli as Gayev. The production was remounted at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music in 1988 after tours through Africa and the Middle East.
The Steppenwolf Theatre Company performed a version that was translated by
Associate Artistic Director Curt Columbus and directed by ensemble member Tina
Landau. The play premiered on November 4, 2004 and ran until March 5, 2005 at the
Downstairs Theatre, Chicago.

Libby Appel adapted and directed the play in 2007 for her farewell season as artistic
director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
In 2009, a new version of the play by Tom Stoppard was performed as the first
production of The Bridge Project, a partnership between North American and U.K.
theaters. Sam Mendes directed the production with a cast including Simon Russell
Beale, Sinad Cusack, Richard Easton, Rebecca Hall and Ethan Hawke.
In April 2010 at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh the Scottish playwright John
Byrne staged a new version of the play as a Scottish social comedy under its original
title.
Artists Reps adaptation of The Cherry Orchard premieres April 22, 2011.

Background/Context of the Playwright:

Biography:
Born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia, on the Sea of
Azov, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov would eventually become one of
Russias most cherished storytellers. Especially fond of vaudevilles
and French farces, he produced some hilarious one-acts, but it is his
full-length tragedies that have secured him a place among the
greatest dramatists of all time.
Chekhov began writing short stories during his days as a
medical student at the University of Moscow. After graduating in
1884 with a degree in medicine, he began to freelance as a journalist
and writer of comic sketches. Early in his career, he mastered the
form of the one-act and produced several masterpieces of this genre
including The Bear (1888) in which a creditor hounds a young widow, but becomes so
impressed when she agrees to fight a duel with him that he proposes marriage, and The
Wedding (1889) in which a bridegrooms plans to have a general attend his wedding ceremony
backfire when the general turns out to be a retired naval captain of the second rank.
Ivanov (1887), Chekhovs first full-length play, a fairly immature work compared to his
later plays, examines the suicide of a young man very similar to Chekhov himself in many ways.
His next play, The Wood Demon (1888) was also fairly unsuccessful. In fact, it was not until the
Moscow Art Theater production of The Seagull (1897) that Chekhov enjoyed his first
overwhelming success. The same play had been performed two years earlier at the
Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and had been so badly received that Chekhov had
actually left the auditorium during the second act and vowed never to write for the theater
again. But in the hands of the Moscow Art Theatre, the play was transformed into a critical
success, and Chekhov soon realized that the earlier production had failed because the actors
had not understood their roles. In 1899, Chekhov gave the Moscow Art Theatre a revised
version of The Wood Demon, now titled Uncle Vanya (1899). Along with The Three Sisters
(1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904), this play would go on to become one of the

masterpieces of the modern theater. Chekhov considered his mature plays to be a kind of
comic satire, pointing out the unhappy nature of existence in turn-of-the-century Russia.
Perhaps Chekhov's style was described best by the playwright himself when he wrote:
All I wanted was to say honestly to people: Have a look at yourselves and see
how bad and dreary your lives are! The important thing is that people should
realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better
life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite
different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not
exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: Please, understand that
your life is bad and dreary!
In March of 1897, Chekhov had suffered a lung hemorrhage, and although he still made
occasional trips to Moscow to participate in the productions of his plays, he was forced to
spend most of his time in the Crimea where he had gone for his health. Chekhov married
actress Olga Knipper, of the Moscow Art Theatre, on May 21, 1901. He died of tuberculosis in a
German health resort a few years later on July 14, 1904, at the age of 44, and was buried in
Moscow.

Chekhov's Timeline:
1860 Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is born, the son of a grocer, in
Taganrog. In the U.S., Abraham Lincoln is elected president and South
Carolina secedes from the Union. The Civil War continues until 1865.
1868 Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, moves to Germany and
produces some of his most famous work. Ibsen is known as the
father of modern realism.
1869 War and Peace, Leo Tolstoys novel, is published. Tolstoy took
six years to write it.
1875 Chekhovs father flees Taganrog due to bankruptcy; Chekhovs family is kicked out of their
house.
1876 In the U.S., Lt. Col. George A. Custers regiment is wiped out by Sioux Indians under Sitting
Bull at the Little Big Horn River, MT.
1877 Anna Karenina is published four years after Tolstoy began writing it.
1879 Chekhov rejoins his family in Moscow and enrolls in University to study medicine. Ibsens
A Dolls House premieres in Copenhagen, Denmark on December 21.
1882 Chekhov is a regular contributor to a St. Petersburg humorous journal with short stories
and sketches.

1884 Chekhov begins practicing medicine.

1886 In the U.S., the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
1887 Chekhov is a literary success in St. Petersburg with his first play, Ivanov.
1888 Chekhov begins publishing his
stories.
1889 In the U.S., Oklahoma is opened to
the settlers.
1890 Chekhov begins to see himself as a
serious writer. In the U.S., last major
battle of the Indian Wars occurs at
Wounded Knee in SD.

Above: Chekhov reads to members of Moscow Art Theatre

1895 Moscow Art Theatre opens. Chekhov writes The Seagull.

1896 The Seagull opens. It survives only five performances after a disastrous opening night.
1897 Chekhov realizes he is suffering from advanced tuberculosis.
1898 The Seagull is produced successfully by the Moscow Art Theatre. The U.S. annexes
Hawaii.
1899 Uncle Vanya is produced successfully by the Moscow Art Theatre.
1900 In the U.S., Galveston hurricane leaves an
estimated 6,000 to 8,000 dead.
1901 Three Sisters is produced to poor reviews.
Chekhov marries actress Olga Knipper.
1903 In the U.S., Wright brothers make the first
controlled, sustained flight in heaver-than-air
aircraft at Kitty Hawk, NC.
At left: Chekhov with wife Olga Knipper

1904 The Cherry Orchard, Chekhovs last play, is

produced. After two heart attacks, Chekhov dies in a hotel bedroom on July 14 at the age of 44.
His last words: I havent had champagne for a long time.
1924 Konstantin Stanislavsky publishes his memoirs, My Life in Art, in Boston, MA in English. It
was later revised and published in Russian in Moscow. His acting system for achieving true-tolife believability onstage has enormously influenced modern theater and film.

Whats with the Names?

Russian names have three parts: the given name, the patronymic name
(based on the fathers first name) and the family name (based on the fathers
last name). Most Russian names have a variety of forms:
For example, the name Mikhail, in this form, is used in formal relationships and in
official documents (passport, birth certificate, contracts). The short name Misha is used by
friends and family members. The affectionate form is Mishenka; Mishunya is used by parents
and grandparents. The rude form, Mishka, is impolite. Russian male patronymic names are
formed by adding endings such as -evich, -ovich (Nikolayevich, Mikhailovich)- for example, Lyev
Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Russian female patronymic names are formed by adding endings such as
-ovna, -evna (Nikolayevna, Mikhailovna)- for example, Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Putina is the
wife of Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.
Ruby Andreyevna Ranevskaya
A given name: Ruby
A patronymic name identifying ones father: Andreyevna (daughter of Andrey)
A surname: Ranevskaya
The Russian language is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. For example, the word Russia
in Cyrillic is: . English translations of Chekhov plays use the European alphabet for the
characters names, which cannot be translated, to sound like the names in Russian. As a result,
different translations and adaptations may spell character names differently. In fact, Madame
Ranevskayas given name in several translations of the play is Lyubov, which means love.
To a Russian ear, certain associations can be made with the names. Lyubov obviously
suggests the kind of indiscriminate love that characterizes Ranevskaya. Gaev suggests gaer,
buffoon, while Lopakhin may be derived either from lopata, shovel, or lopat, to shovel food
down ones throat. Simeonov-Pishchik combines an ancient
autocratic name with a silly one reminiscent of pishchat, to
chirp. A pishchik is a swizzle, or pipe, used by puppeteers to
produce the voice of Petrushka, a stock character of Russian
folk puppetry, generally portrayed as a jester.

What would your Russian name be?

At right: Petrushka

Glossary/Key Terms:
Money:
The ruble has been the Russian unit of currency for about 500 years. From 1710, one
ruble was divided into 100 kopeks.

At the end of the 19th Century, one ruble was worth 0.0373 troy oz. gold, or 0.771 US
dollars.

A College Education:
Radical student dropouts, such as Peter Trofimov, were far from uncommon. The saying
went, It takes 10 years to graduatefive in study, four in exile, and one wasted while
the University is shut down.

Marrons glacs: A confection consisting of chestnuts candied in sugar syrup and glazed,
they were popularized during Louis XIVs reign at the end of the 17 th Century.

Caligula: Also known as Gaius, Caligula was Roman Emperor from 37 AD until 41 AD
when he was assassinated by members of the Guard. His favored horse, Incitatus, was
named not only a citizen of Rome, but also a member of the Roman Senate.

Nietzsche: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), was a 19th Century German

philosopher and classical philologist. His philosophy encourages a new master morality
and instigates revolt against the conventional constraints of Western civilization.

Pushkin: Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837) was a Russian author of the

Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet. He pioneered
the use of vernacular speech in his poems and plays.

Goethe: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a German writer. His works span
the fields of poetry, drama, literature, philosophy and science. Faust, a tragic play in
two parts, is his most famous work and considered by many to be one of the greatest
works of German literature.

Tolstoy: Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian writer of realist
fiction and philosophical essays. His works War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent,
in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19 th Century Russian life and attitudes, a
peak of realist fiction.

Feast of the Holy Trinity: Also called Trinity Sunday, it is a feast in honor of the Trinity
celebrated in Christian churches on the Sunday following Pentecost (the 50 th day after
Easter). It is known that the feast was celebrated on this day as early as the 10 th
Century.

Konstantin Stanislavsky decided that the estate in The Cherry Orchard was located in the Oryol
Province near Kursk, possibly because the area is rich in potters clay and would justify the
Englishmen in Act Four finding some sort of white clay
on Pishchiks land.
Right: An old map of the Oryol Province

Themes:
Memory:
Memory is seen both as a source of personal identity and as a burden preventing the
attainment of happiness. Ranevsky wants to seek refuge in the past from the despair of her
present life but the estate contains awful memories of the death of her son. For Lopakhin,
memories are oppressive, for they are memories of a brutal, uncultured peasant upbringing.
They conflict with his present identity as a well-heeled businessman.
Trofimov is concerned more with Russias historical memory of its past, a past which he
views as oppressive and needing an explicit renunciation if Russia is to move forward. Firs lives
solely in memorymost of his speeches in the play relate to what life was like before the serfs
were freed. At the end of the play, he is forgotten by the other characters.
Each character sees a different aspect of the past, either personal or historical, in the
cherry orchard. Ranevsky, for example, perceives her dead mother walking through the orchard
in Act One; for her, the orchard is a personal relic of her idyllic childhood. Trofimov, on the
other hand, near the end of Act Two, sees in the orchard the faces of the serfs who lived and
died in slavery on Ranevskys estate. For Lopakhin, the orchard is intimately tied to his personal
memories of a brutal childhood.
Social change and progress:
Ironically, when the estate is auctioned, it is purchased by Lopakhin. He used to be a
slave at the orchard, but after he won his freedom, he became a successful merchant and could
afford to purchase the estate. The sale of the cherry orchard exemplifies the old order giving
way to the new.
Several characters address the potential differences between social change and social
progress. Firs and Trofimov question the utility of the emancipation. As Firs notes, it made

everyone happy, but they did not know why they were happy. Society has changed, but Firs
life, and the lives of countless others, have not progressed. Both characters insinuate that the
emancipation is not enough to constitute progress.
Independence, Emancipation, Freedom:
This play deals with the theme of independence in many different ways. The play may
be seen to ask: What does it mean to be free? The plays characters demonstrate the
different degrees of freedom that result from the emancipation. On opposing ends of this
question are Lopakhin and Firs. One man has been able to take advantage of his emancipation
to make himself independent; the other, although he is technically free, has not changed his
position at all and is subject to the whims of the family he serves.
Madame Ranevsky is not free in a very different way: she had enough assets to be able
to control her own destiny, but she has been a slave to her passions, spending extravagantly
and making poor decisions in romance. Trofimov, the plays idealist, offers one definition of
freedom: he is a free man because he is beholden to no one, just his own concept of morality.
The play suggests that there are two sources that control freedom: economics, which comes
from without, and control over oneself, which comes from within.
The Cherry Tree:
In Japan, cherry blossoms (sakura) are a metaphor for life: a
brief blooming followed by the inevitable fall. It is the official flower
of March, and symbolizes prosperity, wealth and riches. It is also an
emblem of bushido, the warrior code of the samurai. Because the
blossom is so short-lived, the fallen flower stands as a symbol to
warriors who died young. Westerners think about death and rebirth
in the fall. The Japanese think about it in April.
In China, the cherry blossom is the official flower of April, and
symbolizes good education, hope, youth (and the upheavals of puberty), virility and feminine
beauty. It is considered lucky. To some, it symbolizes the fact that humans are born into this
world naked and without possessions, and that we return the same way.
Cherry tree symbols mean
death and rebirth and new
awakenings. Because of their
considerable value as both food and
ornamental plants, many cherry and
other fruit tree species have been
introduced to parts of the world to
which they are not native. Many of
the Old World species are grown for
ornament or fruit, and have been
planted throughout the world. Some

have become naturalized beyond their native range.

To a less literal-minded and more receptive
audience, the cherry orchard takes onsymbolic
qualities: it represents an economic and social
dinosaur approaching extinction. A cherry
orchard that could glut the world with cherries
and yet cannot earn its owners a living
symbolizes a decrepit world, a decrepit Russia for
which ordered destruction is the only alternative
to disordered ruination.
-Donald Rayfield. Professor at Queen Mary,
University of London

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

For Lopakhin, the orchard represents both an

economic dinosaur and an unmissable business By A.E. Housman
opportunity, as well as embodying the
oppression suffered by his father and earlier generations before the emancipation.
Paradoxically, it is also for him the most beautiful place in the world a beauty that he can
only ever dream of possessing, and which through possessing he is bound to destroy.
The Snapping String:
The most famous effect of the play, the breaking string, has a history. The image occurs
in the epilogue of Leo Tolstoys epic novel, War and Peace, warning of revolt to come:
Why, everything is going to ruin. Bribery in the law-courts, in the army nothing by coercion
and drill: exilepeople are being tortured, and enlightenment is suppressed. Everything
youthful and honourablethey are crushing! Everybody sees that it cant go on like this. The
strain is too great, and the string must snap, said Pierre (as men always do say, looking into the
working of any government so long as governments have existed).

Directors Notes:
Director Jon Kretzu finds rehearsal inspiration in many sources. Here are some of the quotes he
shared with his cast in the rehearsal hall. Take a look and consider how they might inform the
actors or the directors perspective.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.
Four Quartets
T. S. Eliot
Chekhovs characters act out a drama that is generic rather than historically specific: a time of
social change, the passing of an old order, middle-aged regrets for the squandering of life, the
bold, if possibly deluded, hopes of a younger generation all of it simultaneously pathetic and
absurd.
Translatable Chekhov
Nicholas Grene
Endlessly I gaze at you in wonder, blessed ones, at your composure
At how in eternal delight you bear your vanishing beauty
Ah, if only we knew how to blossom: out hearts would pass
Beyond every small danger, and would find peace in the greatest danger of all.
The Almond Trees In Blossom
Rainer Maria Rilke
His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious
of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was
fading out into a grey improbable world: the solid world itself, which those dead had one time
reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.
It had begun to snow againit was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless
hills, falling softly upon the bog of Allen and, further westward, softly falling into the dark
mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the
hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly, drifted on the crooked crosses and
headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned as he heard
the snow falling, faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of the last end,
upon all the living and the dead.
The Dead
James Joyce
The past is a foreign country they do things differently there.
The Go-Between
L. P. Hartley

If you want nothing, hope for nothing, and fear nothing,

You cannot be an artist.
Anton Chekhov
The best way to imagine what may come is to remember what is past.
George Savile
One of the things that interested Chekhov in his last play, with his own death only months
away, is not so much the finality of terrible events as their survivability, their way of slipping out
of mind, once they have occurred, and of disappearing in the endless wash of further events.
The irony of his observations remained with him to the end.
Michael Frayn
I remember waking,
a February morning leprous with frost
above the dregs of a halfhearted snowfall,
to find the grey world of adulthood
everywhere, as though there never
had been any other, in that same house
I could not bear to leave, where even now
the child who wept to leave still sits
weeping at the thought of exile.
Black Buttercups
Amy Clampitt
Seeing her, I thought her very beautiful, still rich in hopes, full of laughter, formed from the very
years which I myself had lost. She was like my own youth. Time - colourless and
inapprehensible. Time - so clear that I was almost able to see it and touch it, had suddenly
materialized before meIt was time to begin.
Remembrance of Things Past
Marcel Proust / Harold Pinter
Life can only be understood backwards;
But it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard

Questions for Consideration:

What is the significance of the plays setting?
How is the cherry orchard perceived by the servant class?
Compare and contrast the main sets of characters, in terms of personality, speech and
language, actions, morality. The sets: Ranevsky and Lopakhin; Anya and Varya; and
Trofimov and Lopahkin.
What love relationships are developed in the play and how do they each end?
Many of the most important and traumatic events in the play either happen before the
plays action or off-stage. Why would Chekhov stage some of the most dramatic events
outside the confines of the play itself? What effect does this have on the play?
How does the playwright present the characters? Do you think he is hard/critical to any
one of these characters? For example, do you feel Lopakhin, the merchant, is
unpleasant, or do you like/dislike Madame Ranevsky because of the way she acts or is
treated in the play? Why or why not?
What does the old servant Firs suggest about the supposed emancipation of the serfs?
Why or why not? How does that compare, for example, to the emancipation of the
slaves in the 19th Century America? Were the slaves and the serfs truly liberated?
Was the Ranevsky family doomed to lose the cherry orchard? What does Trofimov
suggest are the historical causes behind the loss?
Why does Trofimov say that he is not interested in love? Why is love a target of criticism
of the play? Why is love perceived as a problem?
What does the play say about work?
After Viewing Artists Repertory Theatres Production:
A production of a play must make many choices not specified in the text about tone,
emphasis and theme. What choices have the director, designers and actors made in this
particular production of the play? How might the class have staged the play differently?
How does this adaptation compare to other adaptations that you may have seen?
How was costuming used by the designers to reflect the differing backgrounds, activities
and opinions of the varied characters?
Was anything seen on stage surprising, given what the students had read before seeing
the play?
How are the themes of the play reflected in the scenic design?
What did you make of Anton Chekhov appearing as a character on the stage? How does
it affect your understanding of the material?
In what ways is The Cherry Orchard similar to movies you would see today? How is it
different?

Study guide research compiled by Stephanie Mulligan and Cambria Cloud

Bibliography
Anton Chekhov, Born January 29, 150 Years Ago. Fogelson Library. Web. 30 Mar. 2011.
<http://fogelsonblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/anton-chekhov-born-january-29-150years.html>.
Assigned, Church and Crown Peasants. Welcome to T-Space. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.
<https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/RussianHeritage/4.PEAS/4.L/Peasants.html>.
Artists Rep - The Cherry Orchard. Welcome to Artists Repertory Theatre. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.
<http://www.artistsrep.org/onstage/2010-2011-season/the-cherry-orchard.aspx>.
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