Barker - Barker: Plays Six

Chekhovs Uncle Vanya is a danse macabre. Its charm lies in its appeal to the death wish in ourselves. In its melancholy celebration of paralysis and spiritual vacuity it makes theatre an art of consolation, a funerary chant for unlived life. By the power of his pity Chekhov subdues our innate sense of other life and innoculates us against the desire to become ourselves.

Vanya, the greatest of his characterizations, is the apotheosis of self-denial. In this broken soul the audience is enabled to pity itself. It is necessary for our own spiritual health to know Vanya need not be Vanya. We love Vanya, but it is a love born of contempt. It is Chekhovs bad faith to induce in his audience an adoration of the broken will. In this he invites us to collude in our own despair.

When we approach a great writer, we come naked, with a certain innocence and fear. We fear what subtle damage might be done to a carefully-constructed life. In Chekhov, this painful exposure is not satisfied by what might be experienced as an act of love. Rather he sends us away more than ever bound in our own clothes. And we are gratified, with the sick gratification that attends on a seduction which is abandoned. Is it not too much trouble to seduce? It is necessary therefore to demonstrate the existence of will in a world where will is relegated to the comic or the inept.

Chekhovs apologists argue his contempt is concentrated on a class, but we know that in diminishing the lives of a class he bleeds the will of his entire audience, making them collaborators in a cult of futility and impotence. Can the individual not burst the barriers of class and repudiate decay? I remade Vanya because I loved his anger, which Chekhov allows to dissipate in toxic resentment. In doing this I denied the misery of the Chekhovian world, where love falters in self-loathing and desire is petulance. In rescuing Vanya from resentment I lent him no solution, since there is no solution to a life. My Vanya is however, cleansed ofbad blood, his actions liberated from the sterile calculation of the pleasure-principle, and his will to self-creation triumphant over guilt. In making him anew, I seized on the single instrument Chekhov had, as it were, left lying idly in his own text.

Vanyas quitting of the Chekhovian madhouse became a metaphor for the potential of art to point heroically, if blindly, to the open door...

SEREBRYAKOV
A Genius in Decay HELENA
A Woman in Search of Experience SONYA
A Spinster with Powerful Arms VANYA
An Undefeated Man MARYIA
A Widow Inclined to Forgive ASTROV
A Conscience Without Power TELYEGHIN
An Apologist for Himself MARINA
A Discriminating Servant CHEKHOV
A Loved Dramatist A MAN appears. VANYA: Unc le
Van ya (Pause.)
Unc le
Unc le
Van ya (Pause. A guitar is strummed..) STOP STRUMMING STOP THAT IDLE FUTILE STRUMMING YOU STOP IT. (It ceases, then continues.) ILL KILL YOU.
ILL (It ceases. ASTROV enters.) ASTROV: Man is endowed with reason and creative power so that he can enhance what he has been endowed with but up till now he has been destroying and not creating there are fewer and fewer forests the rivers are drying up the wild creatures are almost exterminated the climate is being ruined the land is becoming poorer and more hideous every day when I hear the rustling of the young saplings I planted with my own hands I (Pause.) VANYA: Unc le
Unc le (Pause.)
Van ya ASTROV: Im conscious of the fact that the climate is to some extent in my own power too and that if mankind is happy in a thousand years I will be responsible when I plant a little birch tree I. (Pause.

The guitar begins again.) VANYA: KILL YOU I SAID (An old SERVANT crosses the stage.) MARINA: Shh VANYA: ABSOLUTELY KILL MARINA: Shh (She goes out. The guitar stops.) VANYA: I detest your futile and transparent attempts to suffocate my hatred in what you call love what you call compassion what you call what you call your absurd maternal and anodyne endearments what you call what you call (The music begins.) WHO IS THAT GUITARIST STOP HIM ASTROV: Stop him yourself. VANYA: The very sound of life-loathing SHUDDUP (It ceases. A wind blows.) I have a gun. For so long now I have had a gun. This gun I clean most nights.

I clean it with oil in the light of the moon. This is certainly the habit of an assassin. ASTROV: Vanya. VANYA: Unc le
Unc le
Unc le Unc le
Van ya (Pause.) ASTROV: I think you should give me the gun. VANYA: Never. But do go on.

I detest your views but do go on. The trees and so on. I detest your selflessness your abnegation your love of unborn generations which is simply an excuse to avoid living yourself I KNOW ALL THATS WRONG THE WHOLE OF IT but knowing is insufficient hence the uselessness of all criticism but but but YOU HIDE IN CRITICISM LIKE A LITTLE BOY WHO MURDERERS ARE SEEKING your caring your concern your (The guitar begins.) ALL RIGHT
TELYEGHIN
YOU ASKED FOR IT (It ceases.) is impotence admit it admit it why dont you? ASTROV: It is you who is impotent. VANYA: It is me who is impotent and that is how I am able to recognize the condition in you. ASTROV: So what if I were? If women loved men for the dimensions of their VANYA: They do ASTROV: The dimensions and mechanical reactions of VANYA: They do ASTROV: Their phallic VANYA: PRECISELY THEY DO