Interior. A Trunk. Moscow.

Written in pencil, the graphite having pressed, faded and rubbed against itself under the near tectonic pressure of the over-packed, tightly crammed trunk. Set amongst clothing and crumbling daguerreotypes of long dead ghosts. Crushed in the dull, daily bits and pieces of his sister’s life; a whacking fistful of (almost scrap) paper, unbound and heavy with neglect, lies littered with the crossings and re-crossings of a young Anton Chekhov. An unnamed play, his first; unedited, unperformed – and at this point unread.

So the story goes.

Richard Roxburgh and Cate Blanchett in Sydney Theatre Company’s The Present ©Lisa Tomasetti 4.jpg

The discovery of Chekhov’s first play was a matter of chance. Found in his sister’s trunk in an attic in the 1920s. Had that lonely insignificant trunk been swept up and smashed into the rest of the heaping debris of the Russian Revolution, would Chekhov’s first play even have existed? Is there such a thing as an unperformed play? At what point does a play come into existence? Given that it is nearly nothing really until it is spoken, embodied… brought to life by the performers?

Imagine the fussy...