Book 1 of the 19 X 19 CHALLENGE

Antosha and Masha:

The Chekhovs in Yalta

A Play in Four Acts.
by Mark Perry

SYNOPSIS: 

A Chekhov Biography
in Chekhovian Style.

    Yalta, Crimea. 1900. Facing an advanced stage of tuberculosis, Anton Chekhov, famed writer and physician, has retreated to far-off Yalta to recuperate, while his sister Masha - heretofore his best support - is suddenly flourishing in Moscow. Brother and sister struggle to negotiate each's career and marital ambitions, with Anton's affairs seeming to win out. When his marriage falters and his health founders, however, Masha is there and she finds a direction for her own ambition in the promotion of his artistry and legacy. '

Antosha and Masha is a play about the Chekhov household written in homage to Chekhov’s inimitable style. This is both in the play’s form, which mixes the serious and comic, and in its content, as the characters discuss aesthetics and the “opening into eternity” his work invokes. It also documents, in some measure, the genesis of The Cherry Orchard, even as it mirrors the early sunsetting of the writer’s life in his Crimean exile.

EXCERPT:

"ANTON: Life is not cruel, Gorky. Neither is it kind. We move, like ships, from port to port, acquiring or looting, buoyed by ambition and self-interest until we perceive we gain nothing thereby except a more heavily-laden ship, taking on water. Let it go. Let it go. Look at the birds, how they soar above us, light as the wind, looking down. They have the answer.”

CAST:

4 female; 4 male (minimum)
5 female; 7 male (maximum)

Available in Paperback

TITLE: Antosha and Masha: The Chekhovs in Yalta. A Play in Four Acts.

AUTHOR: Mark Perry

PRINT FORMAT: Trade Paperback, 5½ X 8½, 100 pages. $12.00 $10 until 4/9

EBOOK: Not yet available

ISBN: 978-1-953219-01-5

LOC/PCN: Pending

PUBLICATION: March 2026 by Drama Circle.