On the main stage of the Lee Center for the Arts, Chekhov’s gun is about to go off. This spring, Seattle University’s Theatre Department will be performing “The Seagull,” a pioneer in the tragicomedy genre.

Originally written in 1895 by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, “The Seagull” explores the connections between love, loss and the creation of art. The Theatre Department will be performing Anya Reiss’s 2012 translation, transporting the story to an ambiguously modern Britain and bringing the intended relatability of the play to today’s audiences. 

“It’s very human,” Jarrett Magdaleno, a third-year theatre major and actor, said. “I think that’s what I love about Chekhov in general, specifically this show. It’s just very human for better and worse.”

Magdaleno plays Konstantin Treplev, an aspiring yet unsuccessful young playwright. Treplev embodies the tortured, starving artist archetype while avoiding caricature and remaining relatable through his raw, realistic struggles with mental health.

“This is the first character I’ve played in my life so far to where I actually had to take a second after an especially emotional scene to be like, ‘I need like 10 minutes to come down from this,’” Magdaleno said. “Without spoiling too much, I have this moment towards the end of the show where there’s a very emotional confrontation between me and another character, and they leave. I sit on that stage by myself in silence for a good 30 to 50 seconds. I don’t say anything, I just spend some time sitting there, thinking about it, looking around the room, and really just like taking it in. And then I get up and I go and I leave. I’ve never had that challenge before, this level of ‘what can you say without saying anything.’ Once it was over, and I had taken some deep breaths, I was like, this is really satisfying, because it makes me feel as though I’m really alive.” 

The show is ensemble-based, lacking a traditional “leading man.” Each character is fully fleshed out, with authentic relationships that suggest a world of experiences just offstage. This energy translates into the actors, as the small group size leads to closer connections within the cast and crew.

“We’ve all been in the rehearsal space together a lot, which is a lot of laughs,” Isa Sale, a fourth-year theatre and interdisciplinary arts leadership double major, said. “I feel like we got along as a cast, we all built a rapport quite quickly.”

Despite the long rehearsal hours often lasting into the night, Sale finds the time enjoyable and rewarding. “The Seagull” will be her final show at Seattle U after having been part of nearly every production since the fall of her first year. Her character, Nina Zarechnaya, serves as a fitting close to this chapter of Sale’s life.

“Nina starts off being pretty unsure of herself, but she dreams of being an actress. She wants to create, she wants to be known. I can definitely relate to her journey, especially when I was a teenager. I wanted to be an artist, but I wouldn’t necessarily have considered myself one at the time,” Sale said.

The theme of finding one’s self is central to the play. For most characters, this comes with a significant amount of struggle. However, the show balances its numerous tragic moments with those of joy, connection and humor.

“One of the things that I love about this play and about Chekhov is that it’s tragic and a lot of the characters aren’t especially happy, but it’s also funny. It’s not necessarily a comedy, but that’s just what life is like,” Sale said.

The complex tone of “The Seagull” becomes even more poignant when placed in the context of the Theater Department’s year-long fight to save the Lee Center from demolition. While the exact timeline of Lee Center’s closure is unclear, “The Seagull” will likely be one of the final shows performed in this space. This knowledge added a level of mourning to the process, but Magdaleno and Sale both felt that the shared loss brought the production team together in a unique and powerful way.

“I think we’re trying to go really big to make sure that it looks beautiful. To, at the very least, make the school realize what it is that we’ll be missing if they decide to continue with this horrible decision,” Rhyan Mack, a fourth-year creative writing and theatre major and scenic carpenter working on the show, said. “Just showing what it is that we can do, what it is that we have been doing, what we will attempt to continue to do until they take the place from us. I’m so proud of everybody, I’m proud of myself, I’m proud of the work that we’ve done.”

“The Seagull” opens May 16 and will run through May 25 at the Lee Center for the Arts. Tickets can be purchased on the Theatre Department’s website.