The museum houses a sketch of the costume for Pavel Sokolov, the actor who starred as Anton Chekhov in the play “Sakhalin Island. Part 1” directed by Alexander Nordström. The drawing was donated to the museum by the Sakhalin International Theater Center named after Anton Chekhov in 2016.

The sketch is drawn using a muted color palette. Anton Chekhov is depicted wearing a simple brown three-piece suit, a hat, and a pair of pince-nez. On the right side of the drawing, there is an inscription identifying the quantity and size of the materials needed to make the costume.

In her memoirs titled “Chekhov in My Life”, the writer Lydia Avilova described their meeting that took place a year before Chekhov’s journey to Sakhalin,

“Sakhalin Island. Part 1” is an experimental play by the Swedish director Alexander Nordström. It was inspired by Chekhov’s essays “From Siberia”, the book “Sakhalin Island”, the writer’s letters, and Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”.

According to Nordström, he began working on the play to understand why Chekhov, a writer in the prime of his life and creative powers, decided to go to a penal colony on Sakhalin Island. In searching for an answer to this question, the play “Sakhalin Island. Part 1” also raises other important existential themes.

The jewel in the crown of this play is Pavel Sokolov, a young Chekhov Center actor, starring as Anton Chekhov. It was one of the actor’s first major and complicated roles. Apart from portraying such an outstanding and exceptionally charismatic person, Sokolov also had to carry the entire structure of the play that is based around his character’s numerous monologues.

Anton Chekhov was 30 years old when he decided to go to Sakhalin Island and study the life of exiled convicts. He prepared for this trip in advance, studying books on Sakhalin’s geology, history, and ethnography, as well as prison science. He strove to improve the living conditions of the convicts — and he succeeded. “Sakhalin Island” was published in separate chapters in the “Russian Thought” magazine, and later in 1895 as a separate book.