Art is an egg; it needs time and shelter to hatch. That’s why Mani Soleymanlou invited director Catherine Vidal to build her nest at French Theatre: two years of residency, research and creation, occasionally sharing her progress with the audience, to allow the wings of Anton Chekhov’s La  mouette (The Seagull) to spread wide. 

The young playwright Treplev is in love with the actress Nina, who secretly loves the famous writer Trigorin, lover of the great tragedienne Arkadina, Treplev’s mother. Drama of manners on a hellish wheel, intergenerational confrontation, theatrical game of mirrors? Attempting to grasp The Seagull means accepting that it will ultimately elude you. Catherine Vidal and her translator colleague Guillaume Corbeil have approached the play more like a fantastic “living laboratory” where the Russian author objectively presents the characters, their dramas, and their fragile humanity. So it will be up to us, the audience, to come up with a diagnosis. 

A talkback with subscribers, a podcast describing the creative process, a staged reading based on Chekhov’s correspondence and short stories—everything is set for an exploration, accompanied by a team of inspiring artists, of the complex inner workings of the writer and his work. 

Podcast profile of Catherine Vidal 

Want to learn more about Catherine Vidal and the La mouette project? Listen to this podcast (in French only) compiled by Julien Morissette from interview with the director, and visit this web page about the French Theatre Residency.