Provocation: Any scene or moment from The Cherry Orchard. Light.
Statement: When I think of Time, I do not think of Light. When I think of Light, I do not think of Time. Yet when we say “her light has gone out”, we speak of the end of Time. Darkness and death, the end of Life. In this Act 2 Lybov monologue, I explore an interpretation taken from Nikos Karathano’s 2015 production. She searches, strains and cries. She may deceive with lightness but Light eludes her. I think this moment as drowning, how she might be holding a searching torch piercing through darkness, and how her light might have slowly disappeared as her son watched her, both of them sinking into darkness.
Sketched for the Theatre of Others Composition Workshop 2021 (conducted via Zoom).
Tan Shou Chen 