Relevance

Why is this play important in this particular time? Are there social and/or political issues that resonate for you?

Aren't we all a little dazed by life right now? I certainly have been tempted to disassociate from my life from time to time, especially in the face of personal and financial loss. I see even the most practical and intelligent people succumb to a kind of stunned submission.

A month ago my mother asked me to go online and help her answer a question about my father's insurance policy. A letter she had received had urged her to go to the company's website and complete a form. My mother has had trouble learning how to use her computer so she had tried on several occasions to take care of the insurance issue on the phone but the automated 800 attendant had disconnected her and kept her on hold so long that she'd finally given up. I was shocked to see that my father's policy had been canceled and when I asked Mom why she'd let it go so long she just shrugged and said,

“I didn't know what else to do.”

So, she had waited, hoping something (she didn't know what) would happen to make things right. Ellen Crowe is no fool. Years of running a family business on a tight budget and through some difficult times has proven that she is a vastly capable businesswoman. The use of money and business transactions in general have become complicated, though. My mother and father feel shamefully uninformed and left behind by technology and the ever-expanding series of complicated rituals forced upon us by our government --- and culture in general. I imagine, the Russian aristocracy felt a similar sense of confusion as their way of life disappeared.

What do we do???! Wait and see if it just gets better ---

On a more personal note, I fight every day to stay out of the place that Lyubov and Gaev live, a place just a bit out of focus and removed from reality. They live there because they are stuck, with no skills to move ahead into a changing way of life that Lopakhin has mastered so well. It is simply not in their nature. Although I am currently managing the demands of my life, I see clearly the predicament of those who are unable to.

Right now, this second in fact, life is changing past someone’s point of understanding. Everyone I know has been bumping into obstacles that they are not prepared to comprehend, much less overcome.