Every person lives on a spectrum of femininity and masculinity. I like to view this spectrum as a wheel, with every human being constantly fluctuating between the two and very rarely ever resting on just one. Vershinin is no different. Throughout the devising process, I was eager to approach the character of Vershinin from the perspective of a female-identified person, changing the character’s pronouns while continuing to explore both feminine and masculine qualities. In fully exploring these two curves of Vershinin, I was fascinated by what I found. We most often focus on Vershinin as one half of Chekhov’s star-crossed lovers, with her love for Masha being the character’s primary throughline for the audience to follow. We forget that Vershinin is also a parent (in this case, a mother) to two daughters, a spouse (in this case, a wife) to a mentally ill woman, a friend of the Prozorovs’ father, and a colonel who was once surrounded by violence. Perhaps the reason Vershinin loves Masha so much is that Masha fills a void that allows her family to feel complete in a way that her mentally unstable wife is unable to do. Perhaps it is because Masha reminds Vershinin of her good friend, Sergey Prozorov, the father of the sisters, who was once so kind to her when other soldiers were calling her “lovesick.” Perhaps it is merely because getting to know Masha is so much more peaceful than getting to know a battlefield. Love is not formed in a vacuum. Nor is a person singularly defined by the way their love for someone looks from the outside. 

 

Later in the devising process, I became aware of how much of Vershinin’s story in this incarnation of the play is driven by the concept of homonormativity. It was an entity that I could feel driving her throughout the entire production, but couldn’t put a name on until my fellow collaborator Kelly Shannon shared her wisdom on it. As a queer woman in the military, Vershinin is very much forced into a societal box that limits her every decision. Although on the surface she has managed to build herself a fairly progressive life (achieving a high rank in the military while also being married to a woman and raising adopted two daughters), she is still trapped in the expectations that a straight world has put on her LGBT+ identity. Just because she is married doesn’t mean that she is happy - that is an expectation that a straight world has put on her after “generously” giving her the “privilege” of marriage. As a renewed possibility for love arises with Masha, she finds herself caught in this place between hope and assimilation - unfortunately, in the end, the latter becomes too overbearing.

 

Vershinin is so much more of a woman and a person than I could possibly illustrate in these pieces - my hope is simply that you are now able to see her as more than just a vessel for a tragic love story.