Annamaria Pileggi, professor of the practice in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, recently contributed a chapter to the anthology “Approaches to Teaching the Works of Anton Chekhov” (Modern Language Association, 2016).
Pileggi’s piece, titled “A Performance-Based Approach to Play Analysis Using Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Three Sisters,’” argues that Chekhov’s plays represent a unique form on writing, one that remains incomplete until embodied by actors onstage.
It is through the process of acting, Pileggi contends, that students learn to critically and emotionally engage Chekov’s characters — an engagement that ultimately leads to a better understanding of the text itself.