UVA Wise Theater production of ‘Uncle Vanya’ ready for debut

The UVA Wise Theater Department’s first production of the spring, ‘Uncle Vanya’, adaptation by Annie Baker, is set for March 20 in the Gilliam Center for the Arts Black Box Theater. ‘Uncle Vanya‘ is a play about unrequited love, climate change, the beauty and boredom of living in a small town at the edge of the wilderness, and about the ways that our immediate needs and desires can lead people to exploit and destroy what they hold most dear. Set in Russia at the end of the 19th century, the play might as well be set in Wise today.

Performances will be March 20-21 at 8 p.m. and March 27-28 at 8 p.m. The Theater department welcomes all to attend these performances. Tickets are $5 for the public or free with the presentation of a CAVs Card. Tickets may be purchased in person before the shows. The Box Office opens one hour prior to the start of each performance.

about the play

The arrival of an elderly professor and his glamorous young wife, Yelena, to their rural family estate disrupts the steady rhythms of life in the country. Vanya, the brother of the professor’s first wife, and Astrov, the local doctor, both fall in love with Yelena. Meanwhile, the professor’s daughter, Sonya, has long been in love with Dr. Astrov. Matters are brought to a crisis when the professor announces his plans to sell the estate.

This intimate, immersive new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s classic from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker – author of Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation, and The Flick – brings colloquial language to this internationally beloved story of human relationships and yearning. Written with the “goal of creating a version that sounds to our contemporary American ears the way the play sounded to Russian ears during the play’s first productions in the provinces in 1898,” Annie Baker’s Uncle Vanya introduces 21st century audiences to Chekhov’s enduring wit, insight, and emotional depth. Baker’s adaptation is winner of the 2013 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play and nominee for the 2013 Off Broadway Alliance Award for Best Play Revival. The director of this rendition of Uncle Vanya, Katherine Kremer, says the production speaks to pressing, current questions about how to face the climate crisis, as well as timeless, recurrent questions about how to live a meaningful life.

Annie Baker Biography

Annie Baker’s plays include The Antipodes (Signature Theatre), John (National Theatre/Signature Theatre, Obie Award for Collaboration, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominations for Best Play), The Flick (Playwrights Horizons/Barrow Street Theatre/National Theatre, Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Hull-Warriner Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Obie Award for Playwriting, UK Critics Circle Award for Best New Play), Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Obie Award for Best New American Play), Body Awareness (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright), and an adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep, Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival), for which she also designed the costumes. Her plays have been produced at over 200 theaters throughout the U.S. and in over a dozen countries. Other honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Steinberg Playwriting Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and the Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She is a Master-Artist-Residence and Co-Chair of the MFA Playwriting Program at Hunter College.