The Seagull is a play by Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov, written in 1895 and first produced in 1896. The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplev.
Maly Theatre production in 2008
Guest cottage at Melikhovo where Chekhov wrote The Seagull
Chekhov reads The Seagull with the Moscow Art Theatre company. Chekhov reads (centre), on Chekhov's right, Konstantin Stanislavski is seated, and next to him, Olga Knipper. Stanislavski's wife, Maria Lilina, is seated to Chekhov's left. On the far right side of the photograph, Vsevolod Meyerhold is seated. Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko stands in the far left side of the photograph.
Studio portrait of Stanislavski as Trigorin from the 1898 Moscow Art Theatre production
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a great Russian writer and playwright. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."
Chekhov in 1889
Portrait of Anton Chekhov by Isaac Levitan (1886)
Birth house of Anton Chekhov in Taganrog, Chekhova street, Russia
Young Chekhov in 1882
