[I-3,4]
[Chekhov]
SORIN: Looks like the dog will howl again tonight. You see how it is here? In the country, I never get my way. I used to come here from town on vacation but I'd be faced with so much nonsense that as soon as I got here, I wanted to leave. Leaving was the highlight of the visit! But now that I'm retired, I'm stuck here.
TREPLEV: (changing the subject) What do you think of my theater? A curtain, the wings - and nothing but empty space. No scenery at all. You can look straight across the lake to the horizon. We're starting the play just as the moon rises over the lake.
SORIN: Magnificent.
TREPLEV: If Nina gets here on time, that is. Otherwise the whole effect will be lost. Her parents keep such a watch on her, getting out of the house is like escaping from prison. (Fixing Sorin's tie:) Time for a trim, uncle. You look rough around the edges.
SORIN: The tragic story of my life is that I look drunk even when I haven't been drinking. Women have never been attracted to me. (He sits down on a bench.) Why's your mother in such a foul mood?
TREPLEV: She's just bored. And jealous that Nina's in the play but she isn't. She hasn't read it but she already hates it.
SORIN: You're serious?
TREPLEV: Even on this little stage in the middle of nowhere, Nina will be the star and not herself. Mother's so full of contradictions. She's a far more talented actress than Nina, and clever and kind - she can nurse the sick back to health like an angel. But try to give praise to someone else in the theater, and she won't speak to you for days. No, the good reviews only go to Irina Arkadina, we can get enthralled only by her performances. She's also a miser. She has a small fortune in the bank in Odessa - I know that for a fact. But just try asking her for a loan. She breaks into tears.
SORIN: You're getting all worked up because you think she won't like your play. Irina worships the ground you walk on.
TREPLEV: Shall we find out?
(He picks a flower and starts picking off the petals.)
TREPLEV: She loves me, she loves me not . . .she loves me, she loves me not . . . she loves me, she - loves me not! See there? Well, why should she love me? She wants excitement and romance in her life. I'm twenty-five already and a constant reminder that she's not young any more. She says she's only thirty-two when I'm not around. And there's something else - I don't believe in the capital-T theater. She thinks theater serves humanity, that as an actress she is working in the Holy Shrine of Art. As far as I'm concerned, theater today is boring and irrelevant. Look at it - the curtain rises, the lights come up, and all we see are actors strutting around, showing us how to eat and drink and wear the latest fashions, in a story the playwright has infested with a moral, something any dolt can understand, it's so obvious, and then each play repeats the same tired formula over and over again, ad nauseum. That's why I run from the theater, the same way Maupassant ran from the Eiffel Tower, he found it so vulgar.
SORIN: But we need the theater.
TREPLEV: Uncle, what we need is a new kind of theater.