Opening 28 January 2011
The title I Love Thee brings together Chekhov’s one-act plays The Bear and A Marriage Proposal, and stage adaptations of his short stories A Joke and Misery. The point of departure
in combining Chekhov’s drama and short fiction was to create an intimate tragic comedy to
showcase Chekhov’s mastery in fiction and playwriting, both of which are characterized by his deep feeling, a sense of human suffering and subtlety in depicting comic characters and everyday situations.
The decision to combine Chekhov’s short fiction and plays was made by director Nikola
Zavišić, and arose out of the same emotional depth and subject matter shared by Chekhov’s
short fiction and plays. The dramaturgical structure of I Love Thee is based on his short story Misery in which Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, drives his sledge all over snowbound Petersburg and tries to strike a conversation with his patrons to pour out his grief over the loss of his recently deceased son. His patrons, however, are constantly ‘departing’ into their own stories and new dramatic situations.
The use of dramaturgy to link Chekhov’s plays results in a solid narrative structure, and
allows the emergence of a profoundly emotional and comic play about human relations.