The Cherry Orchard at Actors' Shakespeare Project

 Immersive Theater At Its Finest

 by Justin Dormitzer

The Cherry Orchard is a Russian play by Anton Chekhov that is been translated into English. There are many different translations and therefore there are many different versions of the play. The version that we saw was done by The Actor’s Shakespeare Project. The Play tells the story of Lubov, an overly generous old lady who has given away all her money. She has to sell her estate along with her treasured cherry orchard to survive.

The Play took place in one room of an estate in Russia. Instead of having a stage the play itself took place in an actual estate. It was a truly immersive experience because of that. Chairs were set up in a around the room that the play took place in. The actors came in and out of the room through three doors in the house. Two rooms were leading to other rooms in the house and the third one leading to the outside. One of the only design elements that made the house seem unbelievable was the lighting. They tried to have minimal lighting effects, just changing the intensity of the lights, and for good reason too. The few times that there were color filters on the lights made the scene seem artificial and took me out of the moment.

The acting was very believable except for a few modern lines that also took me out of the setting. Besides those few lines and the lighting I felt as though I was just into someone’s house watching their problems unfold instead of watching of play. An example of one of these modern lines is when one of the characters said “oh my God!” All the actors and actresses were very expressive.

While there was a plot, the play mostly focused on the character development of the various people in the play. This was both good and bad. One way that was good was that I felt I got to know characters well by the end of the play. I had a sense of their personalities and what they were like. One way that this was bad is that the plot moved very slowly because it was interrupted by unrelated conversations that were purely there to get to know the characters better. Overall, The Cherry Orchard was an enjoyable play that was truly immersive.