The Plays of Anton Chekhov

These critically hailed translations of The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and the other Chekhov plays are the only ones in English by a Russian-language scholar who is also a veteran Chekhovian actor.

Without compromising the spirit of the text, Paul Schmidt accurately translates Chekhov's entire theatrical canon, rescuing the humor "lost" in most academic translations while respecting the historical context and original social climate.

Schmidt's translations of Chekhov have been successfully staged all over the U.S. by such theatrical directors as Lee Strasberg, Elizabeth Swados, Peter Sellars and Robert Wilson. Critics have hailed these translations as making Chekhov fully accessible to American audiences. They are also accurate — Schmidt has been described as "the gold standard in Russian-English translation" by Michael Holquist of the Russian department at Yale University.

Author Biography: Paul Schmidt , a translator, playwright, and actor, has been involved in the theater for years as a writer, scholar, and performer. He taught for several years at the University of Texas at Austin and is the translator of Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works and The Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov and the editor of Meyerhold at Work. He is also the author of two poetry: Night Lifeand Winter Solstice