Metareflective dialogue with Chekhov: Chekhovian plays by Don Nigro

Abstract

This paper addresses Don Nigro’s two Chekhovian plays – “Our Home and Garden at the Turn of the Century… (A Russian Play)” (2004) and “Emotion Memory” (2008) – as a metareflective dialogue that demonstrates the core concerns of his entire “Russian Cycle”. Based on the playwright’s own metaphor of the “mirror labyrinth”, the analysis demonstrates how Nigro transforms Chekhov’s subtextual poetics into explicit theatrical imagery. Special attention is paid to Nigro’s inversion of Stanislavsky’s “emotional memory”: Whereas Stanislavsky required actors to draw on their own life experience, Nigro’s Chekhov uses the life of another as raw material for art. This inversion raises the ethical question of artistic appropriation, which Nigro qualifies as a “chain of betrayals” – each act of creation simultaneously reflects and distorts its source. The essay argues that Nigro’s dialogue with Chekhov is neither imitation nor parody in the traditional sense, but para-ode (“a song sung alongside”). The article concludes that in these plays Nigro offers a productive model of intercultural artistic dialogue showing how meaning arises precisely from the interaction between cultures.