Chekhov In Love/Viewpoints/100th post WOOOOOO

First off, a hearty pat on the back to myself for 100 posts. I started this blog November last year because I felt compelled to write and review on pretty much everything in my life without being confined to writing facebook notes and trying to tag people, or picking out small smatterings of sentences for the Movies app. And now, here I am, 100 posts later, having sometimes forgotten/lost track of what I've seen or want to mention, but for the most part staying committed to putting my thoughts on paper...metaphorically speaking. And with that, the 100th post is dedicated to *drum roll*......

Chekhov In Love. An acting experiment in three parts. What better than an underdog to steal the glory?

Unfortunately, to explain what Chekhov In Love is, you have to explain an acting technique known as Viewpoints, which is most famous for everyone's complete inability to explain what it is in words. Essentially it is an exercise focusing on several ways of playing with both movement and voice. For example, from what I've experienced, tempo and repetition are some big ones. You play with physical tempo by going from slow motion to full speed or somewhere in-between, or the complete opposite, or even just staying one tempo for the entire set. Repetition in movement can mean anything from two people sharing the same floor pattern to repeating a gesture in a new area or a new way. One of my favorite examples of this in Chekhov In Love was a hand...formation for lack of a better word that started as a simple resting position on a window but turned into a graceful caress of a cheek. So essentially each actor is playing with any of the many physical or vocal viewpoints at any time.

The show essentially centers around 6 actors, who each have a monologue from a Chekhov play (with various editing tweaks) that focuses on love. In the first part, each actor performs his or her monologue while the other actors are on stage performing a repeated movement in very slow motion. In the second, the audience gets to pick which actors will be paired together, as well as where on stage they will be paired, from a hat, and each pair then turns their monologues into a dialogue that's never the same on any night. Sound interesting? Well that's not even the best part. All chaos breaks loose as in the third part the actors are all put on stage at the same time and the monologues become an ensemble piece.

Now, I knew practically nothing of viewpoints besides what my deal girlfriend Amanda, who is in the show, had told me, and with viewpoints being what it is most of what she said was completely lost on me. However, I also had the fortune of getting to see a rehearsal for the first section, which gave me a MUCH better idea of what in the world she had been talking about all this time. So when I finally saw the performance on both Sunday and Monday I was at least mostly prepared for what I would be seeing, which I suppose biases my opinion somewhat. Nonetheless, before I go on I want to say one thing.

Chekhov In Love is one of the most beautiful, fascinating, and completely engrossing things I have ever seen. From the very first moment you walk in and find all six actors pacing the stage in slow motion, mimicking the movements they perform in the first section only to discover later what all those movements were meant for, until the final words of the ensemble piece are spoken, there is a kind of...je ne sais quois, a special something that hangs in the air. It's the feeling you get when you really connect with a great piece of theater, except what produces it here are just how deeply the actors connect to each other, which makes us connect all the more to them. It's the knowledge that whether a scene was good or not as good, it was still something special that won't be repeated again. Something that arose spontaneously from actors listening intently to each other and delivering pieces of a monologue that can vary with just the slightest difference in tone, or even by shortening a line by one word and using that remaining word to respond back in a completely unique way. This entire show is designed around carrying an intensity, whether it be dramatic or humorous, that is impossible to explain, but just as impossible not to feel.

Much like love.

I honestly could just continue heaping praise on this show while trying to sort out exactly the right words to say, but what it comes down to is this: everyone deserves to see this show. Especially the actors among us who live for the moments in theater that make up practically every part of this show. So go reserve your tickets now, cause they're selling out fast and it's a smallish space. I can't help but think of Seattle Shakes' recent Hamlet, and how it was so good I wanted to just keep going back and seeing it again and again and recommending it to everyone I knew. Well, Chekhov In Love makes me feel the same way. So do yourself a favor, and if you're in the area travel up to Bellingham this weekend and go see one of the grandest experiments you'll see.

Personally, I can only hope this experiment is the dawn of a new type of show.

Chekhov In Love gets a 10/10.