Not Quite Three Sisters is an MA P:DP Presentation at Central Saint Martins, playing for one night only next month. It is a multilingual reimagining of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, told by three directors. Three perspectives, one desire. Will they ever return to Moscow?
Where: Platform Theatre
When: 17 Apr, 7pm
Ticket link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/not-quite-three-sisters-tickets-1984753017704 (free registration)
Not Quite Three Sisters is directed by Mia Cousins, Theresa Si, and Shuyi Alice Wang, and designed by Lynia Cao.
I asked the team to tell me more about this intriguing adaptation.
Your show is a multilingual reimagining of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Where did the idea come from?
Theresa: The use of multiple languages in our production came from an early script reading. For me, Three Sisters was already a play I had read many times, but only in Chinese.
That reading was the first time I had encountered the English version. By coincidence, Alice had found a French copy of Three Sisters and bought it, so during that session we began to experiment with different languages.
The potential of multilingual performance became very clear in this play, especially in relation to the ineffectiveness of language.
Mia: Something that struck us was how our different translations had slightly different tones of meaning, resulting in us all understanding the feeling of a scene slightly differently.
For example, something which I read in English may feel completely different in Turkish, because of the specific wording used by the translator.
None of us can speak Russian, so nobody on this project can ever truly understand the text in the way it was originally written.
That’s sort of how we see the characters in the play with their communication with each other, each speaking, but never fully able to understand each other.
The characters often talk at each other, rather than having a proper two-way conversation.
Alice: A multilingual approach raises a question for us: can we understand each other beyond language barriers?
Language is the most important bridge for communication, which gives it a dominant position in human connections.
However, today it seems that everything depends too much on language. We make little effort to understand one another through our shared human nature, and instead define who we are by what we speak.
In our experimental process, we want to challenge the position of language. If we do not understand each other’s language, how can we build a human connection?
This is not a new concept. Multilingual theatre has been staged around the world, for example in German theatre culture.
However, in each context the politics of which language is assumed to be ‘shared’ changes the audience’s relationship to the work.
With this in mind, we would like to ask – we know that English is widely treated as a dominant international language – here in an English-speaking context: if English is not the main language on stage, how will we be heard by English audiences?
You have elected to each direct focusing on one of the sisters. How has this impacted on your development of the show, and how did you choose which character to focus on?
Mia: We decided we wanted to focus our retelling on the sisters, cutting out a lot of the philosophising from the male characters. I am directing Olga, Alice is directing Irina, and Theresa is directing Marsha.
Theresa: Choosing the characters was actually a very peaceful process. Quite interestingly, each of us already had a character we personally preferred, and it just happened that none of us chose the same one.
After the selection, we also realised that each director shared certain similarities with their character. Our personal styles also matched the roles very naturally, which made the collaboration especially interesting. I think this was one of the reasons why working together was possible in the first place.
For me, I feel quite close to Masha’s personality. Although I have not experienced the same situation as she has, her emotions and inner feelings strongly resonate with me. She is also my favourite character and the one I most wanted to explore.
Alice: The three of us have very different directorial styles, which raises a big question: how do we create a world where these characters can live together in harmony?
Throughout our development process, we need to understand each other’s choices of creative materials. This requires patience, careful listening, and setting our egos aside while trusting one another’s decisions.
It also demands a lot of communication and, at times, compromise, so we can inspire each other while still making space for our differences. We are doing a great job during the process, which gives us more confidence in the outcome.
We choose the character we relate to most. This leads to an interesting result: the youngest director chose the oldest sister, while the oldest director chose the youngest one. Maybe age does not define our personality.
At the same time, from the perspective of a spatial designer, this project establishes an interactive relationship between space and performance through movable structures activated by the performers. I hope to extend this approach into exhibition and commercial contexts.
Your adaptation runs just an hour. How did you decide what to include and what to leave out?
Theresa: Our creative process was highly exploratory. We spent a long time digging into the text and identifying keywords that could be shared across all three parts.
At the same time, the three directors regularly prepared workshops and experimented with the actors. Through these workshops, both our direction and our means of expression kept developing and becoming more refined.
After a series of workshops, the three of us began to design and rehearse our own character sections independently, without interrupting or interfering with one another.
Once these individual parts were developed, we showed them to each other, named and numbered each element and fragment, and recorded every image on camera. Some of these fragments were as simple as a projected image, a single line, a piece of music, or one movement.
We then held repeated meetings to discuss the possible combinations of these elements and how they might work together in performance. In collaboration with the actors’ continued experimentation, we eventually arrived at a final collage version.
I think the most interesting part was the spark created by the collision between materials of very different styles. Because we had built up such a large bank of material, the collage process became very efficient.
Alice: We are three female directors. While reading the script, we all kept thinking, “Why is this play called Three Sisters if the male characters speak the most?” From there, the first thing we cut was most of the male characters’ lines.
We want to focus on the sisters’ lives, so we have one actor onstage to play the male characters we believe are essential to telling the sisters’ story.
Before beginning our creative process, we discussed what we wanted to explore through this script and found a shared interest: time.
However, each sister offers a different perspective on time. So, as we moved into our individual processes, we each decided what to include.
For Irina, the youngest sister, her journey shifts from rejecting the present and longing to return to Moscow – which we understand not as a place, but as a past time the three sisters want to recover – to accepting that life will continue as it is. She cannot escape time; she can only keep living within it.
In Shuyi Alice Wang’s staging, Irina’s director, this change is mainly visualized through costume, projection, and movement, creating a series of images onstage.
What is the Platform Theatre like to work in, and have Central St Martin’s been involved in the development of your production?
Mia: The Platform Theatre at Central Saint Martins is a fantastic fully equipped performance space. We are so lucky to have access to the space and to hold our performance there.
As we are on the MA Performance: Design and Practice course at Central Saint Martins, we have been given a great deal of support to create our final shows. It is a busy time for everyone on the course, and we are all excited to share what we have been working on.
Alice: Throughout the creative process, our tutors, who are also outstanding performance practitioners, Peter Brooks, Athina Vahla, and Oleg Mirochnikov, shared their views, experiences, and references to guide and support us in achieving what we set out to do.
The Platform Theatre is a complex, mid-sized theatre with a fly tower. As ambitious emerging performance artists, it is an honour to realize our work in this space.
More than that, the Platform Theatre technical team (Faust Peneyra, Michael Ste-Croix, Michael Breakey, Luke Cunningham and Dimitrios Coumados) has fully supported us throughout the making process, including health & safety, lighting, sound, set, and projection for this complicated production.
With their experience, the realization has been much smoother than we expected. We feel very safe and lucky.
However, CSM is shutting down Platform Theatre in its plan for the coming years. It feels like a shame that theatre spaces are being eliminated in the real world. It also makes us worry about our careers.
Hopefully, this beautiful starting point at Platform Theatre will continue to encourage us to pursue our ambitions, even when reality weighs us down.
Theresa: Our time in the theatre itself is quite limited, so most of the process takes place in the rehearsal room. Fortunately, we already know the theatre very well, and the school’s technical staff are also there to help us solve technical problems.
Lynia: The scenography for Not Quite Three Sisters was inspired by the characters’ living conditions and social environment, with a surrealist approach shaping a mobile and transformable stage structure.
CSM have provided strong production support, including access to wood and metal workshops, enabling the realisation of large-scale structures.
The technical team at Platform Theatre also offered valuable guidance throughout the process, from design development to final installation, contributing significantly to the final outcome.
What’s next after this one showing of the play?
Theresa: We want to create as many opportunities as possible for the work to be seen by a wider audience. At the same time, this is quite a large-scale production, and the set was entirely designed and built independently by our collaborator, Lynia.
Because of this, we hope to find opportunities to collaborate with larger venues. We see this performance as a stepping stone that could help us move beyond CSM. As young theatre-makers, we are also looking for potential funding and support.
Alice: Because we believe in the potential of this work, we hope to attract the attention of venues, production companies, and arts and cultural institutions worldwide.
It may seem like a one-off performance, but it is a meaningful starting point: a journey to refine the piece, help it grow, and connect with audiences around the world.
Lynia: As the scenographer, I hope the work can gain wider visibility, and I also look forward to engaging in dialogue with other designers. I believe the scenography holds strong potential for further development.
If there is an opportunity to restage the production in another theatre, I would like to further refine the structure, enhancing both its adaptability and level of detail.