When you read Chekhov, everything has an even gray tone. When you read 'Family Life', everything has an even white tone. It is almost like when you paint on paper, and you can see the paper through the paint.
Unless you're doing Shakespeare or Chekhov... the written word is not sacrosanct.
I don't think my looks are modern. I always imagined I'd end up doing Chekhov, Ibsen and Shakespeare all my life and never play a contemporary character.
When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.
In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!
In my teaching, I try to expose my students to the widest range of aesthetic possibilities, so I'll offer them stories from Anton Chekhov to Denis Johnson, from Flannery O'Connor to A.M. Homes, and perhaps investigating all that strange variation of beauty has rubbed off on me. Or perhaps that's why I enjoy teaching literature.
An abiding preoccupation for me is how much of our lives are invisible and unknown by other people, like the Chekhov story 'The Lady With the Little Dog.'
It would be a big mistake to think that Chekhov was a natural, that he did not have to work for his effects and singular style.
I'm always keeping an eye out for a period piece. I was trained in theatre, so most of the things we did were classical - Shakespeare, Moliere, and Chekhov.
Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.
