In the summer of 1942, a movement started among Muscovites to help with agricultural work in the countryside. Lily joined a group of Cominternians and went to a suburban town in the south called Serpukhov, where they were to labor on a collective farm. Most men in the countryside had left for the army, so there were mainly women and children working in the kolkhoz now, led by a one-armed, middle-aged veteran. Yomei didn’t go with Lily because her theater institute had just restarted. Every week, Lily wrote to her, reporting on her life in the countryside. She enjoyed herself despite having to get up the moment roosters crowed, usually before five thirty, and having to toil for a whole day, until it was dark. There was an hour lunch break at noon, during which she could nap a little on a ridge in a field. As for food, every meal was the same, a chunk of black bread and a gourd ladle of porridge or soup. But the fare was filling, and breathing the fresh air constantly, Lily felt she was getting healthier by the week. She also mentioned that the helpers from the city could eat as much as they wanted of vegetables in the fields: lettuce, carrots, cabbages, zucchinis, cauliflowers, even turnips, though they mustn’t have tomatoes or cucumbers or radishes. Yomei was amused to read her friend’s letters, wondering why some of the vegetables were not allowed to be consumed freely and whether there was an orchard in the kolkhoz. How she wished she could be with Lily.
Now Yomei worked only part-time at the Comintern, two shifts a week in the radio room, for which she could have four meal tickets. Her drama school again offered her a stipend of two hundred eighty rubles a month, but food was rationed, and one could get bread only with the coupons issued by the city. In contrast, whenever she ate at the Comintern’s cafeteria, she could eat her fill, so the meal tickets were essential for her nourishment.
On the other hand, she was obsessed with theater arts again, for which she was willing to go hungry if need be. She tried to work at the Comintern as little as possible so as to have more time for her studies. At the theater institute, people were amazed by Yomei’s Russian, which she could speak more fluently now, almost with ease. Many male students and faculty members had left the previous year to join the army or the militia. It was said that Professor Gorchakov, though already middle-aged, had become a political instructor in a guerrilla force that was fighting the Nazi army in the south. It was also reported that some of the male theater students had fallen on the front. By now the German forces had bogged down, unable to push forward as they had planned. The tide of war seemed to have turned—the Red Army was fighting back vigorously and gaining the upper hand.
Due to the loss of some students and faculty, the theater institute was smaller in size now, but the instruction and dramatic practice resumed, and people were as busy as before. Yomei was happy to rejoin them and actively participated in the school’s activities. All of a sudden she felt her life had a concrete purpose again.
These days, the acting department of the institute had been talking about staging a play, even though they knew it would be out of the question for them to attract a big audience in a time like this. They wanted to produce a play mainly for pedagogical purposes and wouldn’t worry about audience or profit at all. A few students complained that they should suspend theatrical performances altogether, since shows might make them appear to be fiddling while the whole country was burning with the fire of war. But most faculty viewed this matter differently, arguing that however dire the times were, they had to continue practicing their art. This was their artistic duty, their way of preserving the essence of Russia onstage.
Because most of the best male actors among the faculty and students were absent now, the acting department believed they ought to stage a play that leaned heavily on female actors. They decided on Chekhov’s Three Sisters. All agreed this was an excellent choice, though they would still need a few men for the play, but this wasn’t difficult, because most of the male characters in Three Sisters are unremarkable, and some are old. With a little adjustment and makeup, even a middle-aged actor could play a man of a different age, younger or older. So they should be able to form an appropriate cast. Yet their ambition in staging this masterpiece was modest. They were to do it mainly for the students to learn how to act, specifically in the convention of the Stanislavski method. Not aiming for a hit in town, they would stage it in their own venue. If one performance could bring an audience of two hundred, that would be a success.
Most of the young main characters were to be played by students. Because Yomei spoke Russian well now, she was assigned to play Masha Prozorov, the middle sister, a role she desired in spite of the tremendous challenge it posed. Her classmates were to play the other sisters—Zina would be the elder sister Olga, while Yelena would become Irina, the youngest. Lecturer Katina Lestov, serving as the director, wanted them all to study the play script carefully on their own—everyone must write out their understanding and analysis of the character they were going to play. Sometimes the trio of the sister actresses worked together, comparing notes and sharing their personal interpretations of the characters’ longing to leave their backwater for Moscow. Yelena, blinking her blue eyes, said that even though she was in the capital now, she already missed the former city life terribly, so there was no lacking of emotional connection with the three Prozorov sisters. Yet Director Lestov emphasized that they mustn’t imagine imitating a character but instead they must look into themselves to find their own emotional response to the dramatic situation and follow that impulse to create their personal experience when they were onstage. In other words, they were not just to present the character but also embody the character from both within and without. Katina Lestov revealed to Yomei that she had chosen her for Masha because she, Katina, could see something passionate and impulsive in Yomei despite her Chinese background, and because those inner qualities would help create the character of the middle sister, who had a love affair with a married man, Colonel Vershinin. The director’s revelation made Yomei blush, the tips of her ears even became hot for a few minutes, but she liked to be considered that way: passionate and impulsive, also attractive. Vershinin was played by Leonid, a middle-aged acting teacher, who had a short ginger beard and fit the role well. In the play, the colonel was a fortysomething, already a father of two little girls.
Masha is the only married one among the three sisters. Her husband Kulygin, a local high-school teacher, was played by a student named Reslie Mironov, who was in his midtwenties and pale-faced, with a bump at the bridge of his nose. His appearance seemed to suit Kulygin’s dull but kindhearted disposition. Reslie had attempted to join the army but gotten rejected due to asthma, which had grown more severe during the wintertime. He was talented in his own way, able to play the flute and speak both French and German, but he had been told he couldn’t be useful as soldier. Now he was happy about this role in Three Sisters and worked hard on the preparations, together with the other participants. In the play, Kulygin loves his wife unconditionally, whereas Masha is at times sarcastic and doesn’t always reciprocate his love. Indeed, in her eyes he used to be the cleverest man in town, but as time goes by, she finds him dull and visionless. Unlike him, all three sisters dream of leaving for Moscow, where they imagine living a life full of meaning, purpose, and also happiness. Still, the mundane existence in the small river town takes a toll on them and wears them down. Olga has become an old maid, a headmistress of a local school, while Irina consents to marry a man she doesn’t love. In Masha’s case, she starts an affair with the middle-aged colonel whose uniform and whose habit of philosophizing fascinate her and inflame her reveries and feelings.
The complexity of Masha’s character posed a challenge to Yomei, who had never really fallen in love before. In her comments on the scene in which Colonel Vershinin expresses his infatuation with Masha (“I love your eyes, your gestures; I dream about how you move”), Yomei put triple question marks behind Masha’s response to his sugary words, then pondered Masha’s mixed reply (“When you talk to me like that, I want to laugh, even though it frightens me. Stop, please!…[Sotto voce] No, say it anyway. It doesn’t matter. [Covering her face with both hands] I don’t mind”). Yomei was nagged by the realization that Masha might know the man was just toying with her, but why would she encourage him? What would she, Yomei, do in such a situation? She thought hard about this and wrote out her true feelings: “I wouldn’t mind having a fling with a man if he is really good and attractive to me. I want to expand my life, including my life with men.” She was disturbed by her confession, even though it was only on paper and only to herself. She was glad to play the role of Masha, which seemed to offer a clear glimpse into her own soul. Yes, if she ran into a gorgeous man, whether he was single or married, she’d go with him, even give herself to him. She concluded in her notes on this episode: “Love and passion—the essence of life.” She thought about Lucas and wondered if he was such a man. No, he’s not, she concluded.
On the other hand, she shared Masha’s conviction about the sine qua non of life’s meaning. Masha claims to Vershinin: “It seems to me one must have some faith, or must look for a faith, otherwise one’s life is empty…To live without knowing why the cranes fly, why babies are born, why stars shine in heaven…Either one knows what one lives for, or everything is futile and worthless.” Yomei put an exclamation point at the end of those sentences and added, “Totally agree. That’s why I am studying theater arts, so as to make my little contribution to China’s cultural development, adding a beautiful nuance to the Communist revolution. A good life should result from a combination of passion and purpose, also dedication.”
In the play, the Prozorov sisters’ brother Andrei is an inveterate gambler and has lost tens of thousands of rubles at cards. Without his sisters’ knowledge, he sells the house that belongs to the four of them. Masha’s response to this treachery is more visceral than her sisters’. She confesses to them, “I cannot get it out of my mind…It’s simply disgusting. It torments me, like a nail driven into my head. I can’t remain silent. I mean about Andrei…” Never having owned anything valuable and then having lost it as Masha does in the play, Yomei couldn’t feel the misery of loss that excruciatingly, but she took such a liking to the expression that she adopted the analogy as part of her language. Whenever she was pained, agonizing over something, she’d say, even in Chinese, “like a nail in my head that I can’t have pulled out.”
Still, the biggest challenge to her in the performance was language. She had to articulate like a native Russian speaker, and for that, she spent at least five hours a day improving her speech, which had to be delivered naturally, without any hesitation. Her stage partner Reslie, who played her husband, helped her practice whenever he could. By and by, she sounded more natural, and was even able to manage naturally the retroflex R sound, which needed her to turn and curve her tongue backward. She had an extraordinary memory and could learn everything by heart with ease. So Katina Lestov was pleased to see the progress she was making.
After the phase of character preparations was over, they began rehearsing. For this, they divided the play into different segments so that they could be more focused in the rehearsals. Some of the passages in Chekhov’s original script were too long, so Leonid (Colonel Vershinin onstage), being an amateur playwright, condensed them. The shortened passages, tighter and more energetic now, suited Yomei better in her playing Masha and also made the drama more dynamic and move faster.
The rehearsals went well by and large, but at the last act Yomei appeared slightly out of character. The soldiers are leaving, and so is Colonel Vershinin. When he says farewell to Masha, who can’t get some poetic words out of her mind, repeating, “A green oak by a curved seashore, / upon that oak a golden chain,” she is agitated and might now realize that the affair between them might become nothing but a fling. Having seen that all the officers are gone, she speaks to her sisters, neither of whom is dreaming of going to Moscow anymore, saying, “They are leaving us. There’s one who has gone for good, forever. We are alone now and have to start our life over again. We must go on…We must go on living…”
Yomei delivered those lines quite rationally. Throughout the final scene, she tried to act like a reasonable woman, but Director Lestov said to her afterward, “You were rather detached onstage just now. Even your sobs at Vershinin’s departure didn’t seem right. Think about the good times you spent with the colonel. Were you not in the garden or in a room with him before his departure? What did you do to each other? Try to re-create that experience of joy and pain for yourself.”
“This is really hard for me, like a nail in my head,” Yomei confessed. “Different from Masha, I have no such experience with a man.” She meant to say she hadn’t slept with any man yet, but she was too bashful to let that out.
“But you’re not supposed to imitate Masha. Use your imagination,” Katina said with a straight face while her index finger was cranking at her temple. “As an artist, you must participate in the drama that is also part of your own creation. Imagine the kind of mixed emotions you might have at such a moment.”
What Director Lestov was trying to convey was the actor’s total participation in the drama—even when absent from the scene, her new presence must manifest that she has been in the drama the whole time. Their institute’s principle of acting was that whether the actors were onstage or not, psychologically they must be in the drama from start to finish. Likewise, Yomei was supposed to manifest Masha’s continuous affair with Colonel Vershinin throughout the second half of the play, and every one of her appearances must reflect this continuity. Therefore, Vershinin’s departure must upset her deeply, both physically and psychologically, which must be shown in Masha’s convulsive sobs while she wraps her arms around him, unwilling to let him go.
Following the director’s guidance, before entering the final scene in the dress rehearsal, Yomei sat alone in a corner and, eyes closed, began making out with the tall and handsome Colonel Vershinin mentally so that she could appear turned on. She imagined kissing him hard on the mouth and enjoying his touch on her body here and there. Indeed, when she took the stage, she radiated with a flushing face and flashing eyes, even her chest swelling a little. Everyone was struck by her new appearance. Afterward both Zina and Yelena complimented her on her tormented beauty. Leonid even said to others, “My goodness, she’d so bewitching and so passionate. How could I leave such a woman behind? What a dolt I am!”
Hearing him, people all laughed. Yomei tittered too, saying she had just been acting. Reslie also complimented her, saying, “You did marvelously. You made me envy Colonel Vershinin.” In the play, even though he knows there has been an affair going on between his wife and the officer, the good-hearted Kulygin, without showing any trace of irritation, promises Masha he will love her all the same and will never “make any allusion” to it.
Katina Lestov was so pleased that she told Yomei, “You’re downright striking, a born actress. You know how to make yourself act like an experienced woman in love—her mixed feelings, both her hunger for fulfillment and her heartbreak.”
“Did I overdo it?” Yomei asked hesitantly.
“Not at all. Please continue to perform like that,” Katina said.
Yet as expected, some people began to complain about Yomei’s playing the role of Masha. They argued that Three Sisters was quintessentially a Russian play, a crowning jewel of the nation’s dramatic achievement. How did they dare to let a foreign lady play such a major part? In spite of her charm and beauty and her excellent acting skill, and in spite of the sandy wig, the shell necklace, and the heeled pumps she wore, everybody could tell she was not a Russian. She spoke their mother tongue with traces of an accent and with slight hesitation, so her playing Masha was a bad choice, inappropriate to say the least. But such grumbles dissipated after the theater institute officially explained that the performance was only students’ coursework and that Yomei, as an international student, was supposed to learn how to perform in the Russian way. It was part of her education assigned by the Soviet government.