About the Play:

Three Sisters is a full-length drama by Anton Chekhov, in a revised English version by Jean-Claude van Itallie. A year after the devastating loss of their father, Olga, Masha, Irina, and their brother Andrey search for a way out of the drudgery of provincial life. As the years bring continued loss and disappointment, the sisters seek the strength and the will to live.

Three Sisters, an eloquent, sensitive adaptation of the play that many consider to be Chekhov's masterpiece, brings new life and pertinence to a modern classic. Trapped in a provincial Russian town after the death of their father, three sisters lament the passing of better times and long for the excitement of Moscow. One of them has married a local high school teacher; another has become a teacher herself; the third has settled for a dull job in the local telegraph office. Their principal interest is focused on the officers of the local regiment, of which their father had been commandant, men who bring a sense of sophistication and the world outside to their stultified existence. Much of the action is concerned with the events of daily life: their brother's dull marriage; bittersweet flirtations with the regimental officers; and the gossip and restrictions of small town life. In the end the fateful pattern of their existence is made clear — their dreams will be denied but, despite all, there must always be hope, however futile, and the ways of the world are to be accepted, if not understood.

Jean-Claude van Itallie's version of Three Sisters was first produced in 1979 at the Rokeby Estate in Rhinebeck, New York. In 1979 it premiered both at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts and at the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) in New York (with Sam Waterston and Diane Weist).

Cast: 16 performers: 7 female, minimum of 7 male (14 total)

Jean-Claude van Itallie (1936-2021) was one of the most distinguished playwrights of the American avant-garde. Born in Brussels, Belgium, he was three when his family fled the Holocaust to America as refugees in 1940. He grew up on suburban Long Island, graduated Harvard in 1958, and in the 1960s was a seminal force in the explosive New York Off-Broadway theatre. He may be best-known for America Hurrah (his landmark counter-culture trilogy comprised of Interview, TV and Motel), The Serpent, Tibetan Book of the Dead, and his translations of Chekhov's major plays, which are prized by directors and actors for their clarity and actability, are possibly the most performed Chekhov versions on the American stage.