'Dreams Of Violets': AI Movie Première

 

[In recent weeks, both the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union that represents professionals in the media, including film and television, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization which presents the Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, have enacted firm rules to restrict artificial intelligence. 

[SAG-AFTRA secured a tentative agreement imposing stricter rules on synthetic characters, among other restrictions.  In May, the union reached a tentative four-year contract agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers which, while it doesn’t completely ban synthetic digital characters, it heavily disincentivizes their use.  Studios must prove that a synthetic character adds “significant additional value” that a live union actor can’t provide.

[If a studio wishes to use a fully synthetic performer (like, say, Tilly Norwood), it must formally notify SAG-AFTRA and enter a specific negotiation and arbitration system.  If an agreement isn’t reached, the union can arbitrate for damages that exceed standard human-actor compensation. 

[Pending ratification by the membership, the SAG-AFTRA contract with AMPTP will run from 1 July 2026 through 30 June 2030.

[Also in May, the Academy updated its eligibility rules for the 99th Academy Awards (scheduled for March 2027), drawing a hard line around core creative categories.  Only roles “credited in the film’s legal billing and demonstrably performed by humans with their consent” are eligible for Academy Awards.  This effectively bans synthetic or fully AI-generated performers from receiving acting nominations.

[The rules also now explicitly codify that screenplays must be entirely "human-authored to be eligible" for Best Original or Adapted Screenplay.  Submitters must sign a formal declaration confirming human creation; false declarations result in immediate disqualification.

[Generative AI remains permitted in technical fields like Best Visual Effects.  The Academy stated that AI tools used outside of acting and writing will “neither help nor harm” a film’s overall nomination chances.

[The AMPAS restrictions take effect immediately for the 99th Academy Awards cycle and apply to all feature films with a qualifying theatrical release between 1 January and 31 December 2026.  The Board of Governors reviews its campaign and eligibility rules annually, however, so these AI guidelines will be re-evaluated and potentially updated every spring ahead of future Oscar cycles.

[So, now Dreams of Violets, a 75-minute feature-length docudrama that is the first fully AI-generated live-action feature film ever accepted into the official lineup of a marquee film festival, is scheduled to make its world première on Wednesday, 10 June 2026—that’s three days from now.

[(Hell Grind, a 2026 95-minute AI-generated sci-fi action-fantasy movie made by Aitore Zholdaskali [b. 1996], director and co-writer, and Adilkhan Yerzhanov [b. 1982], co-writer, two experienced and respected Kazakh filmmakers based in Almaty, premièred on 16 May 2026 at the Cannes Film Festival.  It was, however, a peripheral event of the festival, not in the official program.

[(The Tribeca Film Festival takes place from Wednesday, 3, to Sunday, 14 June, in New York City at various locations around Manhattan.  The screening of Dreams of Violets on the 10th will be at the AMC 19th Street East 6:, located at 890 Broadway at East 19th Street in the Flat Iron District of Manhattan, near Union Square.  [For the festival, the theater is designated the “AMC Flat Iron Theatre.”  This is a temporary event name used for special film screenings hosted at the Tribeca Festival.])

[Because every visual aspect, background, and character was built using generative AI platforms, the film’s première has sparked significant discussion regarding the ethics and future of AI technology in Hollywood filmmaking.  The primary controversy surrounding Dreams of Violets is the displacement of human jobs in the film industry, as the feature was created by just two filmmakers on a $2,000 budget, eliminating traditional roles like actors, cinematographers, and set designers.

[On other topics, critics question whether AI-generated content possesses genuine human emotion and soul.  Controversy also remains over whether AI models were trained on copyrighted works without permission or compensation.  Finally, purists argue that major festivals like Tribeca should exclusively honor traditional, human-made cinema (essentially the same issue that the new Academy Awards rules address).

[After I heard the report “A.I. Backlash” by business and technology correspondent Jo Ling Kent on the CBS Evening News of 29 May, I was interested enough to look a little more into this film “made with no lights, no cameras, and no actors.”  Below are the results of my investigation.]

Tehran, January 2026. Dreams of Violets is a 75-minute docudrama feature inspired by real events from 47 years of Iranian civilian resistance.  Through the eyes of five strangers, it brings protest footage to life with raw immediacy.

—From the producers’ plot précis

“At this time in history when both artificial intelligence and Iran are central to global conversation, [Dreams of Violets] offers audiences a rare and intimate perspective into a conflict many have not been able to fully see or understand,” said Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca Festival co-founder with Robert de Niro, in a statement.  

Let’s do the fundamentals first. 

Dreams of Violets is a fictional, Farsi-language (Persian) docudrama running one hour and 14 minutes that was entirely generated by artificial intelligence.  It was made in the United Kingdom by Fountain 0, a “film studio that blends traditional creative principles with frontier technologies to produce previously impossible movies and TV shows,” according to its own website.  It’s Fountain 0’s initial production.

The movie’s director, writer, and composer is Ash Koosha (who’s also the CEO of Fountain 0); its producers are Ash Koosha and his older brother, Pooya Koosha (co-director of Dreams of Violets and chief technology officer of Fountain 0), who are Tehran-born citizens of the U.K.  They founded Fountain 0 in 2025 to develop custom-built software to solve the technical limitations of commercial AI tools and to lower the financial barriers associated with traditional filmmaking. 

(Ash Koosha’s birth name is Ashkan Kooshanejad [b. 1985], and he’s also a well-known and popular multi-instrumentalist, composer, and record producer.  He’s based in London.  Pooya Koosha (also known as Pooya Kooshanezhad [b. 1982]—note the variant spellings of the brothers’ family name) is a tech entrepreneur, systems architect, and filmmaker.  He’s based in Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.  When the brothers established their professional careers in the U.K., having fled the Islamic Republic in 2009, they simplified their last names for the Western tech and media industries.)

Dreams of Violets is a fully AI-generated feature film.  As CBS’s Jo Ling Kent reports, there’s “No cast, no crew” and “AI programs . . . generate all of the film's imagery.”

The plot, set against the backdrop of civilian protests in Tehran in January 2026 when the Iranian government perpetrated widespread massacres of civilians, centers on five strangers trapped in a shadowy dead-end alley by a soldier who’s about to execute them, while Amir, a 10-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, watches in a wheelchair from a window above. 

Other elements of the storyline, as related in Rolling Stone, are “unrest . . . stirring outside as people gather on motorcycles.  A separate story follows a woman whose family asks her to stop going out.  And then there’s a man falling from a building, smoke bombs, and an army quelling protesters.”

Nothing that I read, however, provides an interpretation of the movie’s title, Dreams of Violets, and I gather that there are no lines in the script that explain it directly.  The closest there is may be some words heard in the trailer that’s on several sites online, spoken to Amir by a family member as he wheels away from the camera: “Did you know a violet is the only flower that grows in the dark?  The root doesn't need light.  It only needs a crack.  A gap in the earth.  That's all!”

Though not botanically accurate, that line is apparently symbolic of the film’s theme. First, violets bloom in late winter and early spring and thus appear in Iranian and Persian poetry as harbingers of renewal or rebirth after the desolation and deprivations of winter.  (Think of the Prague Spring of 1968 or the Arab Spring in the early 2010s.) 

The “dark” certainly represents the totalitarian regime of the Islamic Republic and the brutal military crackdown under which the movie shows the Iranian citizens living.  The “root” might refer to the generations of Iranians and Persians who came before and cherished and guarded their freedom, as well as those over the past 47 years who’ve resisted tyranny in Iran.  The “crack in the earth,” then, might represent the small gaps where freedom survives today in the Iran the Koosha’s depict. 

The “dreams” of the title, then, would be the Iranian people’s vision of the hopes for the future promised by the metaphorical violets.  Even though the movie takes place in a dark landscape, both literally (the alley) and figuratively due to the communications blackout and the armed repression imposed by the regime, the Kooshas want it to encourage hope—a field of violets growing in the dark, waiting to burst out in color in the awaited sunshine.

The live-action docufiction was filmed in a mere three months at a cost of $2,000, with actors, sets, and cameras replaced by AI models.  Ash Koosha worked at home evenings and weekends while performing his duties as CEO of Claigrid, the bothers’ AI start-up, during the day.

Director Koosha observed, “It would take probably a year or two to get this right” in the tradition process.  “The notion of making films at the speed of news itself is something I’m super interested in.”  With so “little first-hand journalism” coming out of Iran about the events of last January, Koosha was inspired “to make the first film about” the massacres.

There are no actors, or even digital clones (of either actual actors or real people on the scene) in Dreams of Violets; all the characters, though based on news photographs and videos, are entirely fictional digital models created using generative AI tools. 

The AI movie “is a specific genre, at least for me,” Ash Koosha told CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) News.  It’s a way to tell stories much like animation, says the director-producer.  RollingStone, however, reports that “signs of AI exist in the smudged backgrounds of the shots, but the 83-seconds makes it seem as though Koosha . . . has created a realistic-looking film.”

On the other hand, Business Wire expressed the opinion, “The combination of creativity and technological innovation resulted in a film that appears as realistic as films produced through traditional human labor.”  The website found that the AI tools were “used to create a remarkably touching, impactful and at times shocking film.”  Business Wire states that Dreams of Violets “is indistinguishable from an independent film with human writers, directors, and actors.”

While the characters’ faces and bodies are entirely fake, their visual designs, emotional expressions, and the scenarios they endure were guided by real photos, journalistic reporting, and eyewitness accounts of the brutal suppression of protests in Iran. 

Co-directors Ash and Pooya Koosha say they designed the synthetic cast this way to capture a sense of raw realism without exploiting the identities—or risking the safety—of actual Iranian citizens and protestors.  Ash Koosha explains that he created the characters by describing people he’s known in the past—though no one living in Iran today—as references.

The Hollywood Reporter recorded that to make Dreams of Violets, in addition to Fountain 0’s own technology, the Koosha brothers used AI software tools like Google’s Nanobanana for imagery and core frames, Kling AI (developed by the Chinese tech company Kuaishou) for video generation from frames, Anthropic’s Claude AI for language-related editing, and Google’s Gemini for helped with researching the project. 

THR further reported that, on the other hand, the writing and editing of the script, the voicing of characters (before alteration by AI), and the movement and positioning (blocking) of the AI-generated actors on screen was all done by Ash Koosha using human creativity.

In a statement recounted in Variety, Ash Koosha acknowledged,

I understand that an AI-generated film about people who actually died raises difficult questions.  I have thought about those questions for every minute of every day I have worked on this film.  My answer is that the alternative — silence, forgetting, the regime’s preferred outcome — is worse.  The film exists because the dead deserve to be witnessed and because the families inside Iran, who cannot speak, deserve someone outside who refuses to forget.

It’s significant to note that this particular story had personal meaning for Pooya and, especially, Ash Koosha.  The movie is far more than an artistic or political mission for its creators.  A recently published report in the Guardian of the U.K. reveals some of the reasons.

Ash Koosha began his career as a musician in Tehran playing in underground rock bands.  Rock music was strictly forbidden by the Iranian Ministry of Culture as part of the regime’s restrictions on Western-influenced music, so Koosha and his band were already in risky territory. 

In 2007, Koosha organized and played in clandestine, underground rock concerts.  After a semi-festival, initially planned as a cultural event with the support of UNICEF, was canceled at the last minute by the government, Koosha and his heavy rock band, Font, moved the gig to a private suburban villa outside Tehran.

The organizers invited 150 people, but word spread quickly in the underground scene, and 700 people showed up.  The authorities used soldiers and hovering helicopters to raid the unauthorized festival and more than 200 attendees and musicians were arrested because not only was rock music forbidden by the regime, but so were mixed-gender gatherings.

Koosha was arrested after the raid and he spent 21 days in a maximum-security prison following the raid.  Two years later, in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election of June 2009, the Koosha brothers feared for their freedom. 

The 2007 raid broke up Ash Koosha’s previous band, Front, but the brothers formed a new indie-rock band called Take It Easy Hospital.  Ash was the front man, while Pooya served as the band’s bassist. 

Filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi recruited Ash Koosha and the band to star in his underground docudrama, No One Knows About Persian Cats.  The movie secretly chronicled the plight of underground Iranian musicians like Koosha.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009, just as political tensions peaked in Iran.  Following the heavily protested and violently suppressed presidential elections in June 2009, the Iranian regime began ruthlessly hunting down anyone involved in political dissent or unauthorized, Western-influenced media.

Because of their prominent roles in No One Knows About Persian Cats, which won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, and their active participation in the underground scene, the band members were marked by the regime.  Promoting an invitation to perform at a U.K. music festival as their ticket out of Iran, the Koosha brothers and their bandmates left together.  

As soon as they arrived on British soil, they applied for asylum, stating that returning to Tehran would mean immediate imprisonment.  What they saw in 2026 must have seemed like déjà vu.  It’s not surprising that the Kooshas, especially Ash, would feel strongly about Dreams of Violets.  As Ash Koosha says, “This is a very personal story to us having experienced brutality in Iran.’

As for those engaged in the project, but not viscerally involved, Variety reports that Rosenthal called the film “a powerful example of how emerging technologies like AI can be used not simply as tools of innovation, but as vehicles for deeply human storytelling.” 

“What moved us,” asserted Rosenthal, “was not just the technological achievement, but the emotional immediacy and urgency of the story itself.”  She added that “this film offers audiences a rare and intimate perspective into a conflict many have not been able to fully see or understand.”

According to TechEBlog, an online media outlet and blog that covers the latest technology, Dreams of Violets is “a fiction based on reality” since Ash Koosha focused on “the human aspect” of the Iranian uprising “and not on the chaos itself.”

Although Dreams of Violets is fiction, not a documentary, “I would say 80% of it is a recreation of events that actually happened,” says director Koosha.

Director Ash Koosha observed that he had started to work on the film soon after he saw online reports and videos of the January 2026 massacres (which may have ultimately killed over 36,500 Iranians) before the Internet blackout imposed by the regime. 

“For 72 hours,” he attested, “we saw things that were just horrifying.  It was a bloodbath.”  What he had done until then, either in music or technology, hadn’t been politics.  “This,” he declared, “made me political.”

In a statement quoted by THR, he said that Dreams of Violets couldn’t have even been made if not for AI.  The director wrote:

I want to be honest about why I made it the way I did.  It was not a technological exercise.  I would have preferred to make this film with a crew, with actors, with the dignity of a full production.  That was not available to me.  I am one person, in exile, with no access to Iran, no access to the locations, no access to the people.  The AI pipeline made it possible to do what would otherwise have been impossible: to create a memorial film for an event that happened behind a wall I cannot cross.

Tom Rogers, Fountain 0’s executive chairman, told DealBook, a New York Times newsletter, “The film industry is going to be transformed by A.I.”  He added that Dreams of Violets demonstrated that “great independent films can be made without big studio financial backing”—not to mention actors, designers, camera operators, and stage crews—among other workers. 

So Rogers conceded that there’d be “a lot of consternation” about job displacement as well, considering that AI fears ignited two strikes in the film and TV arena just three years ago (see “2023 Writers Guild Strike” [1 June 2023] and “‘The Actors' Strike Dims a Bright Spot For New York City'” [25 July 2023].)

Furthermore, while Kent on CBS reports on roiling elsewhere in the film-and-TV quadrant of the AI-verse (of a trio of kiddie shows from Amazon MGM that are animated by AI, one creator dropped out prompted by “a backlash” and the creator of another AI-animated series became “horrified and disgusted” when the producers moved without her input), DealBook reports that the première of Dreams of Violets “could ignite a debate about the role of generative A.I. in creating original entertainment and provoke fresh fears about job losses in Hollywood.”

As Fountain 0 is about to début its first feature, the Kooshas see their AI-generated movie model as production-ready for independent filmmakers—despite the prediction that AI will bring about the demise of Hollywood.

Ash Koosha asserts that “for the many independent filmmakers, and would be independent filmmakers, whose biggest barrier is access to money to make their films, Fountian 0 technology solves for the financial barriers they face.”

“There’s no way for me to go get millions of dollars to make” Dreams of Violets, insisted Koosha.

For a traditional “Micro-Budget” film, for instance, the average production cost would be $20,000 to $250,000 in the U.S. or £16,000 ($21,600) to £200,000 ($270,000) in the U.K.  These are typically ultra-low budget projects, self-financed or backed by small investors.

A standard indie feature, which generally employs some union professionals, uses union-scale minimums, and must have enough capital to afford location permits, insurance, and professional post-production, costs from $20,000 to $250,000 in the United States and £350,000 ($472,500) to £1.5 million ($2.025 million) in the U.K.

At the high end, a full studio production requiring union crew rates, substantial visual effects, A-list talent, and comprehensive marketing, if made in the U.S., would cost between $5 million and $100+ million, while a top-end film made in the United Kingdom would run from £4 million ($5.4 million) to £60+ million ($81+ million).

“As a first time film creator, there is no way I could have brought this film to fruition without what our AI tools enabled me to do,” declared Ash Koosha, responding to the anxiety expressed by many in the film world.  Foundation 0 has two more films in production, and Ash Koosha pledges that “we will actively seek top writer and director talent whose creativity can be harnessed to produce great movies without their imaginations and visions facing any financial constraints.”

Added brother Pooya:

Having been deeply involved for a number of years in how AI could be utilized and tamed at the highest and most sophisticated levels, I realized our video production techniques were way ahead of the rest of the marketplace.  I also realized that our ability for each subsequent film to improve on our AI production techniques is an enormous opportunity for Fountain 0 to exploit.

[If, after Wednesday, there are reviews of Dreams of Violets, I may append one or two to this post.  Come back then if you’re curious about the reception of this AI movie by the press—film and/or tech.  You can be sure I’ll be looking around the ’Net to see what’s being said.

[If there are a range of assessments, it could be very interesting.  One commentator has already raised a disturbing prospect.  In an exchange on the CBC website, Richard Lachman, a professor of digital media at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of Digital Wisdom: Searching for Agency in the Age of AI (Routledge, 2026), put forth that the appearance of AI movies at film festivals could be the source of problems.

On the one hand, he said, there’s been vocal pushback within the industry, but on the other, the technology has the potential to open up access to filmmaking.

“This film was made for $2,000 [US], and it’s in festival competition. So there’s a democratizing effect,” he said. 

“You don’t have access to a huge film crew and sets and A-list actors? Well, you can still make your unique point of view and get it in a film festival.”

But Lachman said he has concerns about how audiences will interpret AI content that looks real.

”We have a lot of expectations of, if it looks like a person, if it looks like photojournalism footage, then I’m going to interpret it as photojournalism footage,” he said.

“So I’m a little worried about just cautioning everyone ‘don’t believe what you see’ because then we won’t be able to believe real news footage in the same way.”

[On top of concerns about job losses in the industry and a diminution of human creativity and human feelings, Lachman raises the issue of a further reduction of faith in news reporting, this time aided and abetted by people who ought to be journalism’s ally, the film producer, rather than the politician.]

Harrison Ford, SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Recipient

 

[On Sunday, 1 March 2026 at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles, the 32nd Annual Actor Awards (known until November 2025 as the Screen Actors Guild Awards) were presented.  That was also the occasion for the presentation (by actor Woody Harrelson [b. 1961]) of the 2025 SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award.  

[This year’s recipient, the 61st, is actor Harrison Ford, the first to be honored with the newly renamed award. (Up through last year, the award was called the SAG Life Achievement Award because it was originated by the Screen Actors Guild before the 2012 merger with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.)

[The SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award is the highest honor bestowed by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the media professionals’ union, given annually to a performer who fosters the “finest ideals of the acting profession” through career accomplishments and humanitarian work. 

[The honoree is nominated and chosen by the SAG-AFTRA National Honors and Tributes Committee. The award celebrates lifelong dedication to the craft and society.  To qualify, a candidate must be a well-established performer who has improved the image of the acting profession and maintained active involvement in humanitarian or public service endeavors. 

[Two previous recipients of the award, whose careers have been profiled on Rick On Theater, are Barbra Streisand (17 September 2024), the 59th awardee, and Jane Fonda (22 March 2025), the 60th.] 

“HARRISON FORD: HERO OF OUR HEARTS”

[This Harrison Ford profile appeared in the membership magazine SAG-AFTRA (15.2 – Spring 2026).  It was followed by an interview of Ford by the union president, Sean Astin, which I have also reposted below.]

“I was not an overnight success. I struggled for about 15 years, going from acting jobs to carpentry and back to acting, until I finally got a part in a wildly successful film. None of this happened on my own.”

These simple words from 61st SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award recipient Harrison Ford [b. 1942], delivered to a room of his fellow actors during The 32nd Annual Actor Awards Presented by SAG-AFTRA, were fitting and expected of an actor whose decades of work have been the blueprint for today’s modern movie hero. Simple yet humble, with special words of thanks and a life’s worth of gratitude to longtime colleagues in the industry, those few sentences showed the audience and viewers exactly what makes Ford something of a hero among his peers: an individual whose screen work and real life retain their own standard of excellence.

THE UNDERDOG

Once upon a time, the Academy Award- and Golden Globe-nominated performer, now 83, was anything but an A-lister. First came his expulsion [for plagiarism, four days before graduation] from Ripon College in Wisconsin — where he enrolled in his first acting class. A short time later, he was dropped from a contract with Columbian [see anecdote in following article] and, after being limited to small roles, left his Universal contract early in search of better opportunities. It was his self-taught vocation of carpentry that enabled him to continue auditioning in Hollywood and instilled within him the long-held values that have enabled him to become exalted in his profession: self-direction, steadfastness, concentration and perseverance.

His work on George Lucas’ American Graffiti in 1973 followed what was already a decade of other onscreen performances. But it was also a step in the right direction, because what came a few years later, in 1976, changed the trajectory of Ford’s career: another chance meeting with Lucas [b. 1944]. One that turned into a favor helping read lines for the director’s upcoming sci-fi production — a little thing called Star Wars [1977], which went on to gross over $410 million at the box office during its theatrical release.

Maybe you’ve heard of Han Solo?

Or perhaps you’re more familiar with another role that came a few years later. That one was for another action film for another director — a guy named Steven Spielberg [b. 1946]. It was called Raiders of the Lost Ark [1981], and it grossed nearly $390 million in theaters.

What started as a career with the odds stacked against him has turned into decades of successes in Ford’s toolbelt.

THE (SOMETIMES) HERO

If Ford’s career has ever been regarded as a stroke of luck, his work in the years following the late ’70s and early ’80s serves to prove any naysayer wrong. He’s played a hero or other “good guy” across genres — Rick Deckard in Ridley Scott’s [b. 1937] futuristic masterpiece Blade Runner [1982]; Detective John Book in the crime thriller Witness [1985; Peter Weir (b. 1944)]; President James Marshall in the action film Air Force One [1997; Wolfgang Petersen (1941-2022)]; and playboy-turned-romantic lead Linus Larrabee in the 1995 film adaptation of Sabrina [Sydney Pollack (1934-2008)].

But what’s made him a favorite among moviegoers and earned him the Golden Globe’s Cecil B. DeMille Award [2002], the Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute [2000], the Cannes Film Festival’s Honorary Palme d’Or [2023] and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame [2003] has been the performances themselves. What Ford has always demonstrated is an understanding of the human spirit that goes beyond surface level. Hidden within the snappy one-liners and scruffy looks of his most notable roles has always been a performer with an innate knowledge of people: their honesty and deceit; their reluctance and sense of responsibility. It’s the times when he gives The Chosen One a helpful push in the right direction — and follows his own advice — that makes him a hero of the galaxy. It’s the moment he sees the half-human fugitives he’s meant to hunt as something more, and whole, that propels a sci-fi flick into a seminal work of the genre.

Ford’s humanist approach is all the more compelling in roles where he’s gone against Hollywood’s expectations and played the villain. Whether it’s been as the manipulative husband Dr. Norman Spencer in What Lies Beneath [Robert Zemeckis (b. 1951); 2000] or the obsessive patriarch Allie Fox in The Mosquito Coast [Peter Weir; 1986], what makes those moments of betrayal and disaster all the more memorable to audiences is everything that happens before. The scenes where his characters shift from their most charming, doting and morally upright to manipulative, controlling and abusive.

“I [perform] because it’s what I want to do; what I know how to do,” said Ford in a 1997 interview with Charlie Rose. “It’s where I feel the most engaged, challenged and useful. There’s nothing that I do that stimulates me more, scares me and engages me as much as making movies.”

Yet Ford has found just as much success on the small screen. Having previously guest-starred on TV shows such as Gunsmoke [1972, 1973; CBS], The Mod Squad [1968; ABC] and Ironside [1967; NBC], he has gained praise for his two most recent television projects, Yellowstone prequel 1923 [15 episodes, 2023, 2025; Paramount+] and, most notably, Shrinking [33 episodes, 2023, 2024, 2026; Apple TV+]. Both projects have allowed Ford to continue to demonstrate his range for making his characters feel as noble as any gunslinging lawman of the Wild West or as familiar as that one guy in the office who everybody knows.

As the Dutton family patriarch, Jacob, in 1923, Ford’s performances come with fire in his eyes and grit in his voice. But while his sheriff’s badge glints silver, the man underneath is shown to be desperate to keep his family’s livelihood and town from falling into chaos. On the other end of the spectrum, therapist Dr. Paul Rhoades [Ford’s character in Shrinking] is a role where Ford uses improvisation and embodies a gruff, “straight man” brand of humor.

Yet, it’s the tender moments, when his character is shown to enjoy spending time with his doctor-turned-girlfriend or battling with the increasing symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease that stay with viewers. Season two, episode 12 [24 December 2024], “The Last Thanksgiving,” is a certified fan favorite, and Ford’s work on the show earned him a first-time Screen Actors Guild Awards® nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series in 2025.

If good things get better over time, then Ford’s six decades of work prove the old adage is especially true with good storytelling. With experience and a willingness to explore and test one’s own boundaries comes a unique talent: an ability to let audiences be in awe about the best and worst embodiment of a person without judgment.

“I found a calling, a life in storytelling; an identity in pretending to be other people. The work I do with other actors is one of the great joys of my life. My career is built on their work, as well as the work of writers, directors and every single cast member — every crew member I’ve ever been on the set with. I’ve had incredible collaborators every step of the way, and being able to deliver the work we create together to an audience is an honor and a privilege. . . . [Through it] I’ve come to know myself,” said Ford.

THE HUMAN ABOVE ALL

As well-known as Ford is for his professional work, his life away from the limelight is as dynamic as his most heroic portrayals.

The urban legends surrounding his life as a carpenter are quite well-known to fans. Ford is just as famously known as a real-life pilot and has volunteered for many search-and-rescue efforts. Additionally, his early knowledge of the wilderness, stemming from both a love of nature and early years spent as a Boy Scout, has developed into tireless advocacy for environmental causes both in the United States and abroad, including his delivery of testimony before the United Nations Climate Summit for forest and ocean conservation. In 2018, Ford was a recipient of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Artist Inspiration Award for what was then 25 years of service to environmental nonprofit Conservation International, as well as his longtime commitment as a member of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Actors’ Council.  

In the end, it may be that Ford will be remembered as a person who chose for both his life and career the responsibility of advocacy, both for his fellow actors and the world.

Said SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin [b. 1971] of the Life Achievement Award honoree, “Harrison Ford is a singular presence in American life; an actor whose iconic characters have shaped world culture. His career has been endlessly exciting, always returning to his love of acting. We are honored to celebrate a legend whose impact on our craft is indelible.”

Nominated and voted on by the SAG-AFTRA National Honors and Tributes Committee, the Life Achievement Award is awarded annually at the Actor Awards. Considered the union’s highest honor, the award is bestowed to those whose professional and philanthropic contributions bring prestige to the craft of acting and attention to public service efforts. Ford is the awards’ 61st recipient.

*  *  *  *
“HARRISON FORD & THE LIFE OF A WORKING ACTOR” 

[This “Actor to Actor” interview of Harrison by Sean Astin appeared in the membership magazine SAG-AFTRA 15.2 (Spring 2026).]

The 61st Life Achievement Honoree Joins SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin for an Impactful Actor to Actor Interview

Harrison Ford believes in work. He prefers the term “working actor” over “icon” and attests to the power of “putting the work in” in order to be a professional. The result of Ford’s dedication to craft has been his legacy as a performer exalted in the profession. Following the announcement that he was selected to be the 61st SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award honoree, Ford sat down with SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin for an Actor to Actor interview. The following is an abridged version of their conversation that took place on Feb. 4.

SEAN ASTIN: Mr. Ford, Welcome to the SAG-AFTRA headquarters. And congratulations on being this year’s recipient of the Life Achievement Award.

HARRISON FORD: Thank you very much.

ASTIN: I looked up the word “iconic.” [That was] my first thought when they told me they wanted to see if you would accept this award. I thought, “Well he’s iconic.” Can you live with the word “iconic”?

FORD: No, I’d really rather live with the words “working actor.”

ASTIN: So a lot of our performers are in the audition process. It’s all about auditioning on videotape from home — the self tape. And it’s turned into a great convenience. And it makes me think about the contract time; when you’re doing all those auditions under contract.

FORD: Well, the best thing about being under contract is they never put me up for anything I had to audition for.

ASTIN: So that’s it? You’re in the rotation and you just . . .

FORD: Well, because my part often was nothing more than, “Mr. Jones? Paging Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones?” I was under contract at Columbia Pictures for seven years. The first thing they put me in, I was able to remember all the lines of the character I played: a bellboy [Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round. 1966; uncredited]. And I was summoned to the office of the executive of Columbia Pictures that was in charge of the new talent program. He said, “You’re never gonna make it in this business.” And this is on the basis of delivering a telegram. And he said, “Let me tell you a story.” He said, “The first time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie, he delivered a bag of groceries. You took one look at that guy and you say, ‘That’s a movie star.’” I leaned across the desk and said, “I thought you were supposed to think that that was a grocery delivery boy.” He said, “Get the eff out of here.” And I did.

ASTIN: Some actors carry with them self-doubt.

FORD: I can carry both. I mean, I carried both. I carried a belief that I would learn to do this. But a belief also that it was a really hard space to own, and many people were not as successful as they wanted to be in the choice of that as a career. But I was not easily dissuaded. Partially, because I thought that it would take time, and that I was learning . . . To be frank, it was a difficult time in my life. I had kids, and I was struggling with money. But it was a job and I was glad to have it.

ASTIN: I remember Witness. When it came out, I was younger and thinking “Oh, that’s what an actor [does]. You were committed to being an actor. That meant something to me.”

FORD: Well, having seen what you’ve done, I appreciate that very much.

ASTIN: I was in a film trilogy [The Ring Trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003)] . . . There were a thousand moments where the director Peter Jackson would talk about the audience. “This is what I want the audience to be feeling. This is what the audience is thinking.” And I never thought of it like that. I wonder, has that ever been a part of your . . .

FORD: Oh, yeah. I think I’m always aware of the audience and wanting to bring them along. I want to create an experience for them . . . I work for them. That’s my job. And I think about the clarity of what we’re doing. I think about the energy of what we’re doing. I think about the emotion that we’re hoping to create.

ASTIN: You’ve talked [about loving] the process of filming. And I think a lot of actors, maybe many actors, don’t have those conversations with the filmmaker or the screenwriter.

FORD: Then that’s a shame. It’s often unfortunate that an actor comes into a project and doesn’t get a fair share of the director’s attention. Especially actors without a lot of experience.

ASTIN: Well, that’s — I was going to say counterintuitive. But I guess that makes sense that people without a lot of experience would need more of that.

FORD: Not necessarily need more advice, but I think it helps to feel that the director is somehow connected to what you’re doing. And it’s not just an incidental moment, but that it means something. That’s the only way you know what to do. It’s your concept of what the task is. When you say that line, what is the intention that the writer had in mind? What is it you’re hoping to elicit from the audience? What are you feeling? Are you really there? Or is the character really there in that moment? All of those things. It would help to know that the director notices what you’re doing . . . I remember coming in at the beginning of my career, coming onto a set and just feeling like I didn’t belong there. Not knowing how to behave really.

It is often the case that you develop a relationship with the director that is open and fruitful. And there are other cases where that’s not part of his skill necessarily, or not part of your skill, but you still have to attend to the story and your character’s responsibility in the telling of the story. So you can do without that, but it helps to have a little feeling of being accepted, being appreciated.

ASTIN: What I hear you describing is fundamental humility. There must be some kind of discipline you have to have not to abuse it. Or are you just saying, “Hey, no, this is this project. This is this story. These are these characters.”

FORD: You may have a different concept than the director. And you may persist in that concept, as I did with Ridley Scott in Blade Runner, famously. He had a very different idea of the character than what I felt was necessary to drive that character for myself. I had to believe that I was human. Ridley insisted on believing I was replicant, and that I would know it. I said, “I cannot communicate from that point, that place.” I would think that I’m human.

ASTIN: All right, so this is an award being presented to you by a union which you have been a member of [since 1966].

FORD: It’s such a hard thing to be a professional actor. From the very beginning, it’s impossible. And then there’s a crack, and you get a job, and you become a member of the union. And that’s a big, big deal because then you have the support of the union. You have insurance, you have someone speaking for you to the bosses . . . I would never say I was an actor until I was being paid for it. Now that’s my little twist of mind, because that doesn’t really make sense.

ASTIN: Sure it does. Professional. When you’re a professional, you're getting paid for it.

FORD: Yeah, but if you don’t have what an actor needs, you’re not an actor, even if you’re getting paid for it. I mean, it’s a spirit. It’s a diagnosis too. It’s a complicated thing. The thing is that you can’t do it alone. You have to be employed. You have to be in the company of other actors. You can do it for free, but you have to feel like it’s important. You have to feel committed to it and to make it real.

ASTIN: This is a big moment right now for the industry. The culture has changed and the business.

FORD: The business has changed remarkably. And we don’t have the support of movie theaters as much as we used to have. And that is a damn shame. That community experience produces positive effects in the culture. We’ve been disaggregated into serviceable economic units, but there’s not the general feeling of community that we used to have when movies had captured the zeitgeist. They were needed. And they were telling a story that was needed. And that story was a positive contribution to the culture.

ASTIN: It’s still possible. You’re doing it. You’re breaking through [and] reaching other people.

FORD: You’re not in a dark room with people that you don’t know and who you begin to know because you experience a common humanity. That’s a very powerful effect.

ASTIN: I grew to know you in many movies. [It’s an] absolute lifetime achievement for me to get to sit here and interview you.

FORD: Appreciate it.

ASTIN: Much love to you. From all the actors, thank you.

'Seagull: True Story'

 

[Readers of Rick On Theater, even those who aren’t theater folk, probably know that Anton Chekhov, the renowned turn-of-the-20th-century Russian dramatist, is a beloved figure in the Western theater world.  Actors and directors, especially, love to do his plays.  He has a prominent place in nearly every repertory theater’s repertoire. 

[Chekhov’s plays are translated into almost every known language.  They’re also adapted and modernized almost as often as William Shakespeare’s are.  Below is the story, told via an interview with the play’s 34-year-old director, of one of those adaptations.  

[The play, The Seagull, which is about theater and theater people—two actresses and a playwright, has become a vehicle for the director, an exile from Chekhov’s own country, who conceived the adaptation, to tell his own story, 118 years after the playwright’s death.]

“RUSSIANS WHO FLED AFTER UKRAINE INVASION
STAGE FRESH TAKE ON CLASSIC PLAY IN U.S.”
by Jeffrey Brown, Zeba Warsi, and Anne Azzi Davenport

[This segment on PBS News Hour on Tuesday, 19 May 2026, caught my attention for two reasons.  One, it was an interesting theater story: a young, émigré Russian stage director of some accomplishment who fled Putin’s autocratic regime under duress, made a play based on a Chekhov classic that told his own story, got it produced at New York City’s esteemed Public Theater to considerable acclaim.

[And two, I hadn’t heard about it—or him—though he’d been here, working, since 2022 and his play has been staged a few times since early 2025!  So, maybe others missed the memo, too.]

Two Russians who left their country after the invasion of Ukraine and are now rebuilding their lives and careers in the U.S. Senior Arts Correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports on a recent production in New York for our Art in Action series, exploring how art and democracy shape one another, as part of our CANVAS coverage.

Geoff Bennett [Co-anchor of “PBS News Hour”]: Now a different kind of migration story, one involving theater and two Russians who left their country after the invasion of Ukraine and are now rebuilding their lives and careers in the U.S.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports on a recent production in New York for our Art in Action series exploring how art and democracy shape one another as part of our Canvas coverage.

Jeffrey Brown: [On screen: a performance; singing in Russian.] It’s a play within a play, with cabaret humor, even slapstick, alongside the drama of loss of friends, family and country.

Alexander Molochnikov: [Giving a curtain speech.] And I’m very thankful to all of you for allowing me to tell the personal, sometimes even dramatic story in a playful way.

Jeffrey Brown: For Alexander Molochnikov [Александр Молочников; often romanized as Aleksandr Molochnikov; b. 1992], the creator and director of “Seagull: True Story” [written by Eli Rarey (b 1977), with music by Fedor Zhuravlev (b. 1995)] this is personal. It’s based on his own story.

[Molochnikov is a writer, filmmaker, and internationally acclaimed theater director. He worked for over 10 years in Moscow where he directed five major productions in drama, a ballet, an opera, two feature films, and a TV show.

[Molochnikov has created and directed over 10 shows and films in Moscow including the most-viewed six-episode TV series, The Monastery (Монастырь – Monastyr), in 2022. His production of the operas The Telephone and The Medium by Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007) premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre, along with his ballet, The Seagull: Interrupted Flight, which was honored with the Golden Mask (Золотая маска – Zolotaya maska; the Russian equivalent of the Tony Awards) for best ballet of the year.

[Since 2014, his first play, 19.14, an antiwar cabaret play about World War I, had been running in repertoire for over 11 years at the Moscow Art Theater of Chekov. However, the theater has removed his name from all materials. The billing now says “Directed by Director” because the names of directors who supported Ukraine in 2022 no longer appear in print.

[In 2022, he spoke out against the Russian military invasion of Ukraine and then in August, he moved to New York. Molochnikov is now unable to return to Russia. He became a U.S. citizen in early 2026, roughly four years after fleeing Russia.

[His feature film, Tell Her (Скажи ей – skazhi yey), about moving to the U.S. as a child, premiered in 2020 at the 47th Seattle International Film Festival. He premiered a cabaret-style stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic novel, Crime and Punishment (1866), at the Tel Aviv Gesher Theatre in December 2024. He is working now on a feature film related to the novel.

[His short film Extremist (Экстремистка – Ekstremistka) premiered at the 2025 Telluride (Colorado) Film Festival and won the 2025 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Student Award for Live Action (as well as the Special Jury Prize); he is now turning it into a feature.]

What did you most want to bring out in this play?

Alexander Molochnikov: I think the value of art, the value of art as air and water for some people, and not only for people who make it, but sometimes for people who watch it. With choosing between food and art, anybody would choose food if we are dying of hunger.

But, for me, I literally realized through this experience how, without doing theater, I start kind of dying inside.

Jeffrey Brown: [On screen: scenes from the play.] “Seagull: True Story,” recently at New York’s Public Theater [26 March-3 May 2026], plays off Anton Chekhov’s classic “The Seagull” and tells of a young Russian theater director named Kon, Molochnikov’s alter ego, about to achieve his dream of directing a play at the world-renowned Moscow Art Theater, when a very different kind of drama intervenes, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

[The Seagull by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian playwright and short story writer, premièred in 1896 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. (Its title is sometimes rendered in English as The Sea Gull, A Seagull, or A Sea Gull. The Russian title, Chaika [Чайка], has no article (because there are no articles in the Russian language), so it can also be translated as simply Seagull.)

[The character in the original version who becomes Kon, the avatar of Molochnikov in the adaptation, is a symbolist playwright named Konstantin Treplev. (Prior to its Public Theater run, the play was presented Off-Off-Broadway at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club from 16 May to 1 June 2025. From 17 to 19 January 2025, a workshop version of the play was staged under the “working title” Seagull Fucker at La MaMa as part of the Under the Radar Festival.)  

[The first production of Seagull in Saint Petersburg was famously a failure. Not only the play, but Chekhov’s reputation as a dramatist was all but written off.  Then, in 1898, the famous director Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938), cofounder of the Moscow Art Theater, directed it for his troupe, and the production was a success.

[The playwright’s career was saved and The Seagull has since generally been considered the first of Chekhov’s four major plays and one of the masterpieces of modern Western theater.

[The famous Moscow Art Theater opened in 1898, after Stanislavsky, a talented, forward-looking amateur actor and director from a wealthy family, and the successful professional, establishment playwright, critic, and drama teacher Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943), met at Nemirovich-Danchenko’s invitation for an 18-hour discussion in 1897. Both men, who knew only each other’s reputations, wanted to reform the clichéd, melodramatic mainstream Russian theater.

[To develop and teach his acting “system,” which eventually changed the acting style and actor-training practices of almost all Western theater (and formed the basis of the Method), Stanislavsky began opening MAT studios for training actors in 1912, and MAT eventually opened the MAT School in 1943. 

[The theater, which went through a series of name-changes—it didn’t actually become the Moscow Art Theater until 1901—split into two theaters in 1987: the Gorky Moscow Art Theater, the descendant of the original theater, and the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, the house in which the young Molochnikov worked.]

Alexander Molochnikov: In the beginning, you don’t think it’s forever. Or maybe some people understood. I didn’t.

Jeffrey Brown: Four years later, Molochnikov, who in his 20s had already directed productions at leading Moscow theaters, including the Bolshoi . . .

Man [actor in cast rehearsing on stage]: Happy birthday!

Jeffrey Brown: . . . celebrated his 34th birthday with the cast of “Seagull” in New York, where he now lives and works.

Alexander Molochnikov: Oh, wow.

Woman: Make a wish.

Sofia Kapkov, Producer: I had a team of 40 people who was working for me. I signed all documents and I left.

Jeffrey Brown: Also a new New Yorker, the producer of “Seagull: True Story,” 47-year-old Sofia Kapkov [b. 1978].

Sofia Kapkov: I came here without any plan, so I stayed with my friend. I told him I’m going to be there for a week. I ended up for a month. And then after a month, I realized that’s it. That life is gone.

Jeffrey Brown: That former life included heading her own production company that put on prominent contemporary theater and dance performances in Russia and abroad, not overtly political art, but she says a form of activism nonetheless.

Sofia Kapkov: I wanted to open this window to the freedom to show them, OK, another world exists. There is different type of art, for example, or different forms of art. And in a way, this is my type of activism to show something that is relevant, that it’s timely.

Jeffrey Brown: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that. She left within days, taking her two younger children, joining an older daughter who was studying at NYU.

Sofia Kapkov: I had a nice life back then. I had a comfortable life. I had home, friends, projects, successful business.

But I had my doubts in my country. I woke up in the reality that we are killing our neighbors. For me, it was obvious I need to live for the sake of my kids. I don’t want them to get used to the idea that war is normal. And it’s a very hard decision, because you’re not just changing your life from one comfortable life to less comfortable.

You’re changing the destiny of your kids. It’s a very big responsibility.

Jeffrey Brown: Huge changes, big struggles documented in a memoir titled “Arts Hustler: A Story of Resilience” [MART Foundation, 2025], along with some advantages, including having international experience and contacts.

And within two years, she had co-produced “Our Class,” a play [by Tadeusz Słobodzianek (Polish; b. 1955)] set in Poland during World War II about neighbors turning on neighbors. It had successful runs in New York [Classic Stage Company, 12 September-3 November 2024], Boston [Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 13-22 June 2025], and most recently San Francisco [Z Space’s Steindler Stage, 27 March-5 April 2026]. 

In prewar Moscow, Alexander Molochnikov had demonstrated in support of prominent Russian dissident and opposition leader Alexei Navalny [1976-2024]. And after the invasion of Ukraine, he registered his protest with a series of anti-war posts on social media and danced to Ukrainian music in the Russian version of “Dancing With the Stars” [video clip of Molochnikov dancing]. 

His name was taken off production credits and he says he received death threats. In August 2022, he left Russia, enrolling in a graduate film course at Columbia University.

[Immediately after he publicly criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Molochnikov says, he received threats against his safety from the state-funded Wagner Group, the private military company controlled at that time by Yevgeny Prigozhin (1961-2023), a former close ally Vladimir Putin (b. 1952; President of Russia: 2000-08 and 2012-present). The young theater artist reports that mercenaries from the Wagner Group sent him photographs of his parents’ houses in Moscow and Saint Petersburg with such text warnings as “Be careful walking there, you might slip and fall into a pond.”]

From that came a short film titled “Extremist” based on the true story of a young Russian woman whose public protest of the Ukraine war, putting anti-war and anti-Putin messages on grocery items, led to her imprisonment. [Scenes from the film are shown, with balalaika music (“Kalinka,” Russian folk-style song written in 1860 by Ivan Larionov [1830-89]) from the soundtrack.] The film would win various international awards and was also short-listed for an Academy Award for best live-action short.

Today, Molochnikov can see the positive impact of the upheaval he went through.

Alexander Molochnikov: Because collapse motivates you to rebuild and really develop as a person. I didn’t really want it to happen again. We just, like, built something here. I would love a few more years to build more.

But the feeling of apocalypse – and, of course, I want to say that, like, this my little art apocalypse is nothing compared to what people lost in Ukraine. But, still, you lose your career that you’ve been building for 10 years. It’s healthy sometimes to lose it.

Jeffrey Brown: The second half of “Seagull: True Story” is partly based on Molochnikov’s experience after coming to the U.S., including the overt commercialism of the theater world here and what he says were different kinds of restrictions on language and expression he encountered.

[Since we don't have official censorship in the United States, as Molochnikov had experienced in Russia under Putin, when he speaks of “restrictions on language and expression,” he’s talking about “political correctness,” “cancel culture,” ideological conformity, and similar socio-political pressures.

[In 2025, in Cultured, a print and digital magazine about contemporary art, architecture, design, fashion, film, and music, the émigré director asserts, “There are so many things everyone is afraid to talk about [in the U.S.] because we’re afraid society will turn against you. We’re afraid of a witch hunt. We’re afraid to say something that would offend someone when you didn’t mean to offend them.”

[Last April, Molochnikov told the Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper of Columbia University, that many Americans don’t seem to “know how to be free in their society, because of the control over what you can say, words you can use, things that are possible to talk about, and impossible to talk about.”]

And the play includes a moment amid the crackdown in Russia in which one character asked the American audience:

Actor [scene from the play]: And something like this could never happen in America, right?

Actor: Right?

Alexander Molochnikov: Right?

And there’s always – it’s interesting. It’s not a laugh. it’s not a clap. Everyone’s like, oh.

Sofia Kapkov: It just is a concern.

Alexander Molochnikov: I hope that that this play, maybe not in everyone, but in somebody, it would leave some thought or some concern about what’s going on in U.S. today, and I hear it a lot. And many people who saw it a year ago, now they’re like, wow, this is about Iran now.

Jeffrey Brown: Molochnikov and Kapkov say New York is their home now. Both have become U.S. citizens and aim to further build lives here with their artistic work leading the way.

Sofia Kapkov: Theater is very similar to democracy. It should be a free space. There people are allowed to ask any questions. I believe in democracy, and I love this country, and I have hope for America. I’m American now, right?

I don’t have any hope for Russia, unfortunately. And what Putin did, he destroyed life of many generations. I don’t like a lot of stuff that’s going on here in America, but America is even younger than the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

Jeffrey Brown: America, the country.

Sofia Kapkov: America, the country, United States.

[Though the famous theater, opera, and ballet company didn’t acquire the name Bolshoi Theater until 1825, the linear ancestor of the company, which actually had no formal designation, was founded on 28 March 1776 (by license from Empress Catherine II [1729-96; Empress of Russia: 1762-96; commonly known as Catherine the Great]). That’s exactly 98 days (or 14 weeks) before Independence Day, when the U.S. was officially born.

[The name (in Russian: Большо́й Теа́тр) means “Big Theater” or “Grand Theater” to distinguish it from the Maly Theater (Малый Театр), which means “Little Theater” or “Small Theater.” Many cities, such as Saint Petersburg/Leningrad and Moscow, had both, among the many entertainment venues.

[In 18th- and 19th-century Imperial Russia, the designations signified an official categorization of a theater's artistic discipline and its rank within the Imperial Theaters system. The Bolshoi Theaters were designated for grand-scale productions like opera and ballet, which require larger auditoriums to accommodate orchestras, large choruses, and elaborate sets. The Maly Theaters were authorized for dramatic plays, comedies, and spoken theater which are better served in intimate settings constructed so that the performances are closer to the audience.]

Jeffrey Brown: [Over a scene with singing and music.] Good perspective from the theater world to today’s political realities.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in New York.

[I observed in my introduction to this post that the plays of Anton Chekhov are popular with theater people: repertory theaters like to produce them, actors like to act in them, and directors like to direct them.  I also noted that Seagull held a special place among Chekhov’s works because it’s about theater and theater artists.

[One example of the phenomenon is experimental theater director Leonardo Shapiro (1946-97), about whom I’ve blogged many times on ROT.  He acknowledged that Seagull was deeply meaningful to him since he saw a school production of it as a prep school student.  Seagull stayed with Shapiro for the rest of his life.

[Before he’d ever staged a production of Seagull, Shapiro confessed to me, he’d long wanted to direct “an all-star, multi-racial” production of the play in Central Park for Joseph Papp (1921-91).  It was a recurring dream—which never came true.  The play had “always been mixed up in my mind with the love of literature and with idealism,” he explained, but he also admitted that he’d always wanted to direct The Seagull because of the “schmaltz” as well as the “lyricism.” 

[The play had long been a symbol for Shapiro, figuring prominently on a list of influences and inspirations he once wrote out for me.  He even invoked it in a 1965 playlet from his early college days.  When an old New York cabbie morphs into Joe Cino (1931-67), the seminal Off-Off-Broadway café-owner and impresario, the young passenger, a stand-in for Shapiro, asks, “Who are you?” and the cabbie replies, “I am a seagull.  No, that’s not it.”  These are the same words Nina says to Konstantin in Act IV of the play.  Apparently, 19-year-old Shapiro had already cast himself in that role.

[The play “speaks to artists about creativity,” said Shapiro, “and getting caught up in the ‘theater world.’”  He explained that the “basic values” of The Seagull are “love and art,” and that the “theme” was “showing the audience the need for art” in society. 

[(Note that Mokochnikov says above that the message he sees in Seagull is “the value of art, the value of art as air and water for some people, and not only for people who make it, but sometimes for people who watch it.”  The Russian’s statement is, I daresay, the same sentiment as Shapiro expressed.) 

[In the fall of 1992, Shapiro directed Karen Malpede’s Blue Heaven, which was Shapiro’s last New York production and centers loosely on a film production of The Seagull involving several of Blue Heaven’s characters.  For the promotional postcard for Blue Heaven, Shapiro posed the cast and crew in a restaging of a photograph of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s first rehearsal of Seagull in 1898, with Malpede sitting in Chekhov’s place and Shapiro in Stanislavsky’s.

[Ironically, Shapiro eventually directed a production of The Seagull, with the Riverside Repertory Theatre Company of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1996.  It was his last work.  

[In the final year of his life, Shapiro approached Riverside and told the company, “I’m about to die, I want my final show to be The Seagull, and I want you all to be in it.”  Over a five-month period, the company “camped out” three or four days a week near Shapiro’s mountain cabin, spending days on the small, white backyard stage that Shapiro had built against the mountain background—reminiscent of the one for Konstantin’s play.

[Shapiro had initially resisted chemotherapy, but when he started working with Riverside, several company members reported, he began undergoing the treatment.  They figured it was a way to prolong his life in order to finish the play.  Seagull, one cast member felt, helped him decide to take the chemotherapy “so that we wouldn’t have to finish the play without him.” 

[The Riverside Seagull played in Albuquerque from 5 to 14 September 1996 and then in Baltimore, Maryland, from 6 to 17 November.  Shapiro hadn’t been able to travel with his cast, but he lived to see their success in the town—and at the theater—where, 23 years earlier his Shaliko Company débuted.  Leo Shapiro died of cancer on 22 January 1997, 15 days after his 51st birthday (and 18 months after he was diagnosed and given 6 months to live).

[It’s perhaps an interesting sidelight to Shapiro’s special feeling for The Seagull that he had such a proprietary attitude toward the play that he apparently resented when even another artist whom he admired appropriated it.  Tennessee Williams (1911-83), an inspiration and model for Shapiro, wrote his own adaptation of Chekhov’s play, The Notebook of Trigorin, in 1981. 

[Shapiro was aware of Williams’s adaptation, and on 14 December 1992, shortly after the downtown opening of the Shaliko production of Blue Heaven with The Seagull at its center, a staged reading of Williams’s play was performed uptown at Lincoln Center.  Shapiro refused to go despite his special interest in the writer and the source. 

[In his more than 30-year career with the News Hour, Jeffrey BrownJeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.  As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world’s leading writers, musicians, actors, and other artists.  

[Among his signature works at the News Hour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the News Hour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[Zeba Warsi is a foreign affairs producer, based in Washington DC.  She’s a Columbia Journalism School graduate with an M.A. in Political journalism.  She was one of the leading members of the News Hour team that won the 2024 Peabody award for News for our coverage of the war in Gaza and Israel.

[Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Producer of CANVAS at PBS News Hour.]