The Art of Interdisciplinary Collaboration

This winter, Juilliard student and alumni actors and musicians premiered six chamber pieces staged to vignettes adapted from Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Drama faculty member Richard Feldman directed and partnered in preparing the program with chamber music faculty member and Arnhold Creative Associate at Large Nadia Sirota (BM ’04, MM ’06, viola). Called Living Themes: An Afternoon of Chekhov + Music, the interdisciplinary project was part of Juilliard’s February residency at Chelsea Factory.

By Annie Abramczyk

“Courage is the number one thing an artist needs.” —Richard Feldman

It started with a question.

“I was curious about the possibilities that might arise from an interaction of music and text—how they might inform each other and encourage each artist to go places they wouldn’t have gone to on their own,” Richard Feldman said of his inspiration for this project exploring one of the most revered dramatic works of the 20th century: Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters.

Living Themes: An Afternoon of Chekhov + Music consisted of six original musical movements by composition students Nicole Balsirow, Daniel Lubin, Krishan Rai, Katrina Toner, Elise Winkler, and Christian Wray. Each movement was inspired by a prominent motif from the play: time, nature, love, happiness, farewell, and duet.

The performance featured 19 music alums, four drama students, and three drama alums, who performed text from Sisters in Smithereens, an adaptation of Three Sisters conceived by Feldman with drama faculty member Carolyn Serota, who was also the Alexander Technique and movement coach for the project.

The composers workshopped their scores with the actors, musicians, and coaches, and the actors and musicians shared the stage, working together as one ensemble without a conductor. Rather than having the music merely underscore each scene, “We wanted to create something of a hybrid that was satisfying in musical structure and form,” said Nadia Sirota, who coached and co-conceived the production. “The pieces of art are both independent and interrelated.”

Experimentation was encouraged, making each rehearsal a journey of discovery. “The whole process was so dynamic,” said Toner, whose movement was called Happiness in Smithereens. “From the first table read, we were already moving lines around and getting ideas of how certain topics and phrases would play out musically.” Under Feldman and Sirota’s guidance, the ensembles worked together on evolving the scores and scripts, changing lines, and cutting measures.

“We chose Chekhov thinking that his work could survive our experiments,” Feldman joked. The play is so rich and detailed that even fragments prove potent, a testament to Chekhov’s masterful poetic specificity. "The myth about Chekhov is that his plays are these natural objects without artifice that came out of him organically. But his plays are incredibly meticulous works of art, and the choices are carefully crafted,” he added. “There’s so much truth and human nature in the language that you can drop into emotion very easily.” Brittany Bradford (Group 47), one of the drama alums in the project, agreed. “Even when you take lines out of context, they still ring true,” she said.

First performed in 1901, Three Sisters is set in a provincial Russian town and tells the story of the Prozorov family through time—one of the play’s central motifs. In the third act, the doctor examines a ceramic clock and drops it. “Smashed to smithereens,” he announces. That is the guiding image of the piece, according to Feldman. The script is smashed like the clock, with language woven into a collage.

“In a collaborative process like this, you’re much more integrated into the story. You help to create and shape it,” Emily Duncan (MM ’18, flute) said. “The music really is another character in the piece.”

The actors agreed. “You don’t have to work so hard emotionally. Sometimes, the cello does that for you,” Bradford said. Still, the process required “connecting technique—like the Alexander work and the text work—with truth,” she added. The actors exuded an impressive amount of emotional dexterity, profound listening, and physical freedom, a testament to Carolyn Serota’s exquisite movement work with the performers.

"Collaboration on this level requires deep integrity, understanding, and mastery of skills," Feldman said. “Everyone has to learn their craft first. You can’t start collaborating before you know your craft.”

As a student in the acting program, “you take four years to gather as many tools as you can to approach any text or project,” third-year actor Jawuan Tyler Hill noted. “When I first saw the text, I thought, ‘I don’t know how to prepare this.’ But then I saw the drama alumni dive in, and the composers were figuring it out, too. Everyone accepted that things were ever-changing and said yes to the process.”

For Nadia Sirota, a great joy of collaborative experiences is communication. “I love putting people together who don’t speak exactly the same language artistically,” she said. “It’s this idea of slight misunderstandings and retranslations.”

Jocelyn Zhu (MM ’17, violin) said the experience “stretched creative boundaries” and was “nothing short of extraordinary. It proves that innovation thrives in these spaces between disciplines.”

“I’m excited by the opportunities to make [possibilities] happen, finding the right moments in each division’s training to come together,” Feldman said. And doing that is “going to take tolerance for failure on the road to excellence,” the curiosity to explore, and the courage to ask questions.

Annie Abramczyk is the artistic programs assistant of the Drama Division