July 15, 2004 is the 100th anniversary of the death of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), the great Russian playwright and short story writer.

In September, the National Theater Company of China will present its first international drama festival, called "Forever Chekhov."

Opening with Platonov, Chekhov's little known first play directed by Wang Xiaoying, the month-long festival will also run two versions of The Cheery Orchard, one directed by Lin Zhaohua and the other produced by the Russian State Academic Youth Theater.

Other productions include Israel Cameri Theater's Requiem, Canadian Smith-Gilmour Theater's short stories and original works adapted from Chekhov's short stories by young directors and cast of the National Theater Company of China.

Zhao Youliang, president of the National Theater Company of China, says they have two aims in organizing the international festival.

"One is to promote the communication between China's drama circle and our foreign counterparts. The other is to create opportunities for young actors who are the future of the National Theater Company of China," Zhao says.

Influence on China

Shakespeare and Chekhov are two of the most beloved playwrights in the world. Shakespeare wrote some three dozen plays, enough to keep a repertory company busy for decades. And Chekhov, though with only five plays, has had his short stories adapted again and again by theaters worldwide.

However, it is a pity that neither Shakespeare nor Chekhov has been in the regular repertoire in China's theaters.

Lin Zhaohua, the most renowned theater director in China today, commented in a very serious tone at the press conference for the "Forever Chekhov" festival: "It is a great shame that China's theaters do not stage Shakespeare and Chekhov."

Thanks to the National Theater Company of China, Beijing's theater-goers can finally appreciate Chekhov's great works.

The fact that China has produced few Chekhov works does not mean the great figure has no impact on Chinese drama and theater lovers.

Dramatist Cao Yu (1910-96), the first president of Beijing People's Art Theater, wrote in the epilogue of his trademark work The Sunrise (Richu) in 1936: "I remember I was fascinated by Chekhov's profound art a few years ago when I read The Three Sisters. How I was moved by his story... There is no dramatic plot, the structure is smooth but the vivid roles and their souls catch me... I cannot breathe but was immersed in that gloomy atmosphere. I want to be formally apprenticed to the great master to learn from him."

The other Chinese dramatist Jiao Juyin (1905-75) acclaimed the Russian playwright and novelist as "the supreme taste for arts and literature."

Jiao once said he benefited much from Chekhov. "I started directing in a unique way: It was not Stanislavsky who helped me understand Chekhov, it was Chekhov who helped me understand Stanislavsky."

Jiao is one of the pioneers who introduced Chekhov to China's drama circle. He translated some of Chekhov's works into Chinese in the early 1940s.

Doctor and writer

It has been acknowledged that Anton Chekhov was indeed a key component of world literature, a believer in liberty. The bearded figure in a black hat was a master of the short story and a seminal figure in modern theater.

In his work Chekhov combined the dispassionate attitude of a scientist and doctor with the sensitivity and psychological understanding of an artist.

Chekhov often portrayed life in small town Russia, where tragic events occur as a part of everyday life.

The typical Chekhovian story has little external plot. The point of the story is most often found in what happens within a given character, and that is conveyed indirectly, by suggestion or by significant detail.

It is often said that nothing happens in Chekhov's stories and plays, but he compensates for any lack of outward excitement by his original techniques for developing internal drama.

His characters are passive, filled with the feeling of hopelessness and the fruitlessness of all efforts. The younger characters are usually portrayed as victims of illusion, the older ones victims of disillusion.

Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia, as the son of a grocer and grandson of a serf who had bought his freedom in 1841. His mother was the daughter of a cloth merchant.

Chekhov's childhood was shadowed by his father's tyranny and religious fanaticism. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog (1867-68) and Taganrog grammar school (1868-79). The family was forced to move to Moscow following his father's bankruptcy.

At 16 Chekhov became independent and remained for some time alone in his native town, supporting himself through private tutoring.

In 1879 Chekhov entered the Medical School of Moscow University. While at the school he started to publish hundreds of comic short stories to support himself, his mother and siblings.

After graduating in 1884 with a degree in medicine, he began to freelance as a journalist and writer of comic sketches. Meanwhile, he practiced medicine until 1892.

During these years Chekhov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgmental author.

The failure of his play The Wood Demon (1889) and problems with his novel made Chekhov withdraw from literature for a period.

In 1890 he traveled across Siberia to the remote island of Sakhalin, where he conducted a detailed census of some 10,000 convicts and settlers condemned to live their lives in that harsh wilderness.

Chekhov hoped to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. From this journey was born his famous travel book The Island: A Journey to Sakhalin (1893-94).

Chekhov's first book of stories (1886) was a success, and gradually he became a full-time writer. He was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1888. In 1889 he was elected a member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

Although Chekhov wrote several hundred stories, his fame today rests primarily on his plays.

Chekhov used ordinary conversations, pauses, non-communication, non-happening, incomplete thoughts, to reveal the truth behind trivial words and daily life.

Chekhov's first full-length plays were failures. In fact, it was not until the Moscow Art Theater production of The Seagull (1897) that Chekhov enjoyed his first overwhelming success.

Among his masterpieces from this period are Uncle Vanya (1900), The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904). In these plays Chekhov blended laughter and tears, leaving much room for imagination -- his plays, like stories, reflect a multitude of possible viewpoints.

Usually in Chekhov's dramas surprise and tension are not key elements, the dramatic movement is subdued, his characters do not fight, they endure their fate with patience.

In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate in the village of Melikhove, where his best stories were written, including Neighbours (1892), Ward Number Six (1892), The Black Monk (1894), The Murder (1895), and Ariadne (1895).

In 1897 he fell ill with tuberculosis and lived since either abroad or in the Crimea.

In Yalta he wrote his famous stories The Man in a Shell, Gooseberries, About Love, Lady with the Dog and In the Ravine.

In 1901 he married the Moscow Art Theater actress Olga Knipper (1870-1959), who had performed central roles in his plays for years.

Chekhov died on July 14, 1904, in Badenweiler, Germany. He was buried in the cemetery of the Novodeviche Monastery in Moscow.

Though a celebrated figure by the Russian literary public at the time of his death, Chekhov remained rather unknown internationally until the years after World War I, when his works were translated into English.

(China Daily August 27, 2004)