This greatcoat is the stage costume of the actor Pavel Sokolov, who starred as Anton Chekhov in the play “Sakhalin Island. Part 1”. The costume was donated to the museum by the administration of the Sakhalin International Theater Center named after Anton Chekhov in 2019.
“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, 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.
Pavel Sokolov’s only companions on the stage, Roman Tatarchuk and Yelena Bastrygina, instantly transformed themselves into multiple characters whom Chekhov had met on his way to Sakhalin and on the island, including superintendents, army men, convicts, generals, and secretaries.
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.
The trip to Sakhalin put a heavy load on the health
of Anton Chekhov, who had already been diagnosed with tuberculosis. He set off
to Sakhalin wearing a light leather greatcoat and no rubber overshoes. He got
soaked to the skin on many occasions and was constantly freezing. Anton Chekhov
wrote in a letter to his sister Masha,
