Chekov wont go AWAY!!!!

I will love when the day comes that I no longer have to discuss Anton Chekov and his play The Cherry Orchard. Every since my freshman year at Loyola, there have been a few professors that treat Chekov as if he were God himself. From their descriptions, I was honestly thrilled to learn about this great writer that I had never known about, but to my surprise, I did not care for his writing. I obviously cannot say that his writing is not decent, but the thing about his writing that I do not enjoy is his subject matter. In the case of The Cherry Orchard, I think this play is boring, stagnate, and dull. Nothing happens. There is a lot of complaining and walking around and no one does a thing! I understand that that is how the culture was at the time, especially for the women, but man do I find this play dull. I think Chekov did great things for his time, but in modern culture and theatre, I think he has been left behind. I do not think that his work will survive the next hundred years as nothing more than a novelty of the time. If we were to research how often his plays were produced even thirty years ago compared to now we would find that the numbers have consistently gone down. On the other hand though, I feel like Chekov has done great foundation work for other playwrights to elaborate upon. Like in the case of El Nogalar, by Tanya Saracho, Saracho takes Chekov’s original The Cherry Orchard and reinvents it for a modern and contemporary audience. While I still find it a little dull, Saracho did a much better job keeping my attention simply because there is more that I can relate to or at least know someone who can to the situations and characters in the play.