By his own account, Chekhov wrote comedies. He even called them farces. His plays show how “people’s attempts to give meaning to life” fail again and again. Such attempts are often laughable and lead to comic scenes. Our goal was therefore to make the show as light as possible in contrast to the many earlier productions that had emphasized the tragic aspect.

I had a large, completely white space built that eliminated all associations with the Biedermeier rooms of the past. Even the floor was white and the spotlights were clearly visible in that enormous space, which at first glance lent itself more to a ballet than a theater production. Erik accordingly directed his players in carefully chosen patterns of movement. With a nod to those old stage sets, I inserted a multitude of chairs with white slipcovers that dominated the space in varying arrangments.

Yet this clean approach called for something more, in order to create some atmosphere when required. Therefore I decided to apply black-and-white shading on the walls, ranging from a deep dark to a light gray, so that you could make the effect appear and disappear at will, depending on the lighting.