Stanislavisky on Trigorin and Nina

With almost childish pleasure he visited the dirty dressing rooms. He loved not only the footlights, but the backstage of the theater as well. The performance pleased him, but he criticized some of the performers, including my role as Trigorin.

"You act splendidly," he said, "only that's not my character. I didn't write that."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"He has checkered trousers and shoes with worn soles."

That was all he said in reply to my repeated questions.

"Checkered trousers, mind, and he smokes a cigar like this," he rather clumsily illustrated his words. I was able to get nothing more from him. His comments were always graphic and brief. They were striking and memorable, like charades with which you continued to wrestle until you had solved them.

This particular charade I resolved only six years later, when we staged our second production of The Seagull.

Indeed, why had I chose to play Trigorin as a dandy, in white trousers and shoes bain de mer? [beach shoes] Was it because women fell in love with him? Was such dress typical of the Russian writer? It was not, of course, the checkered trousers, worn shoes, and cigar that mattered. Nina Zarechnaya, her head full of the pleasant but empty little stories of Trigorin, falls in love not with him, but with her own girl's dream. In this lies the tragedy of the wounded seagull. In this cruel irony lies the harshness of life. The first love of a provincial girl notices neither the checkered trousers, nor the worn shoes, nor the foul-smelling cigar. This travesty of life is recognized when it is too late, when a life has been broken, the sacrifices made, and love has turned into a habit. New illusions are needed in order to be able to continue living, and Nina looks for them in faith.

Anton Chekhov and His Times compiled by Andrei Turkov. 1995. Page 96-7.