Evolution of the Plays: Event and Structure of Chekhov's Plays “The Wood Demon” and “Uncle Vanya”

Abstract

Chekhov's play “The Wood Demon” was written in 1889, and was adapted as “Uncle Vanya” in 1896. This study compares the event and structure of the two works, explores the compositional causes that made the differences between the two plays, and identifies the evolution of Chekhov's playwriting and its aesthetic characteristics. When writing “The Wood Demon”, Chekhov took a critical attitude towards the conventions of contemporary theater. He thought it inappropriate to show dramatic events on stage, which belong to exceptional phenomena in everyday life. On the other hand, he was of the opinion that theater should express aspects of real life, in which various human emotions are revealed. To represent real life instead of dramatic events in his plays, Chekhov had to create a new form of his play. His attempt resulted in the creation of “The Wood Demon”, which could not be positively evaluated in the world of contemporary theater. “The Wood Demon” is a play with a dual structure in which daily life in the countryside and the motif of love coexist: The expression of daily life hinders the dramatic development of events, and the events reduce the space for detailed description and presentation of social aspects. Chekhov tried to create a play with a new aesthetic, but contemporary critics only saw the absence of traditional conventions instead of something new in his play. His intention to add novelty to the play turned out to be a failure. He was neither faithful to the existing theatrical technique nor completely abandoned it. His comedy “The Wood Demon” ended up being an eclectic work of the new and the old. The adaptation of “The Wood Demon” made it possible for Chekhov to completely get out of the traditional theatrical technique centered on dramatic development of events and create a play “Uncle Vanya” with the new conventions and form. The genre of the new play became ‘scene’, and instead of ‘the event of Love’, ‘the event of Arrival and Departure’ became the center of the content. If the unity of time and space was maintained in “The Wood Demon”, Chekhov gave up temporal structuring and chose spatial structuring in the play “Uncle Vanya”. As a result, the new play shows various aspects of a space, not the causal flow of events: Fragmentary words and actions with weak causality become the content of each act. While “The Wood Demon” is built on the time structure and maintains the causality, consistency, and sequentiality of time, “Uncle Vanya” uses space instead of time as the compositional principle of the play, opening a new horizon for theater.