We sat on her stoop while her baby slept and while her twelve year old daughter Masha showed us Tae Kwan Do kicks. My sister-in-law Natasha who is a native Russian speaker sat down with me and read to me from the original. Meanwhile, I went to Los Angeles for a family vacation where my in-laws live. After I met with John, I asked if Elise could come on as my Russian language conduit. We got to talking about Chekhov and his luminosity, transparency, and spareness, which is often lost in translation. It turns out the woman was a Russian scholar and an extraordinary playwright/director named Elise Thoron. Who is this woman? I must move chairs, I thought. She didn’t exactly look bored, but she looked intriguing. Three chairs down was a woman wearing a flowing red silk shirt, and she had very long tapered fingers. My husband and I were seated with New York business moguls who often attend fund-raisers.
The night before I first met John Doyle, the director of the project, I was at a fund-raiser. But I will learn from a great master, with some help. As such, I thought: I will learn from a great master, and I will try to learn Russian, a language I have always wanted to learn. Terrified, because I don’t speak Russian and I love the play happy, because I don’t speak Russian and I love the play. When Cincinnati Playhouse approached me to translate The Three Sisters I was both terrified and happy.
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