After Il gabbiano played to packed houses last season on the stage of the Teatro Strehler, Leonardo Lidi continues his exploration of the masterpieces by the great Russian playwright. «The second stage of Progetto Čechov – explains the director – is leaving its playful side behind, becoming brutal with time. It brushes aside the peasants citing Dante from memory and permits an ambitious and potent example of abusive construction. There was once a large green meadow, where hope was born, and we built a suffocating house with too many useless rooms to occupy all living space. We once had nuance and now there is a surgical black and white that nods knowingly to the intelligent spectator. We once had men and women who sought out life through love, but we chose to keep our distance. When? When did it become “insignificant” to speak of love? As if there were something else more interesting. While in the Gabbiano we wasted paper and time reasoning over the most correct way to express emotion to the audience, torn between realism and symbolism, between poetry and prose, between directors, writers and actors, and all we needed was a bench to torment ourselves with the pains of the heart, in Zio Vanja, art is relegated to a museum concept, a matter for aristocratic booklets, a sterile form of intellectualism that no longer considers its people, that bores passion and allows the incapable to thrive on theatre.»