The performance "The Bear" was staged especially for the 10th anniversary of the "Melikhovo Spring" (“Spring in Melikhovo”) Theater Festival.
The genre of this play is designated by the playwright himself as "a joke in one act." Over the 120-year history of the stage life of this short but very exhaustive play, there have been hundreds of performances presented in a variety of genres – from a vaudeville to a buffoonery. The performance presented by the “Chekhov Studio” is an attempt to tell us a simple human story about losses and gains. From the perspective of a number of directors, this play can be regarded as a forerunner to Chekhov's other great plays such as “The Cherry Orchard”. Basically, there are two "cherry orchards" in "The Bear" short play: both main characters, Smirnov the landlord and Popova the landlady, have their own "cherry orchards".
