What Chekhov's texts have made unique and interesting for our project are their sensitive diagnoses of a change in time. Although Chekhov's creative period was marked by radicalizing moods and the first protest movements that led to the October Revolution in 1917, his texts were never obviously subordinate to political or ideological issues. He “subtly” interweaved the “mood of change” in psychologically complex and at the same time everyday situations or personal relationships. Chekhov does not write about crumbling societies, but about crumbling cherry orchards, he does not write about approaching revolutions, but about the desire for freedom, which he has all his figures interpreted individually. Sometimes it's the return to Moscow, sometimes the pursuit of new forms of theater and sometimes just the desire not to be declared crazy. And very often nothing happens. Or apparently nothing. It is the emptiness, the waiting, the observation and the hope that makes Chekhov's texts so exciting and painful, because it is always the discrepancy between where his characters want to go and where they are, what fills the empty space. This empty space, which has been called "undramatic" for many years, is ultimately the real tragedy of life. Changes are happening: societies are changing, political systems are changing, technologies are changing, revolts are taking place and all of this is happening and we are right in the middle of it and yet only in retrospect notice how significant this time was historically or socially, while we all according to our own have striven for change.

For us, the Corona period contains this “Chekhovian” dramaturgy: We each sit in our own four walls and wait, waiting for something to change while the whole world is changing outside. We found another parallel in that Chekhov's plays, which almost always take place in provinces or rural areas, where his characters debate from a great distance to what is happening in Moscow, whether they believe in it or not. Thus the pandemic, while for some people, especially those living in big cities, the most demanding time of their lives, may remain a story from the media for others, an echo from far away that has not or has not yet become their own reality.