1st Draft: from the source material to the 1st draft

timotheuswidmer
Mar 7, 2022
5 min read

Updated: Apr 15, 2022

I decided to work on Trofimov before I knew I got cast as Yepikhodov in The Cherry Orchard in the Corbett shows at East 15 before the summer break. I thought being in the show helped me a lot in my understanding of Trofimov's Character. To get a sense of his language and his dynamics and see the focus of his ideology I used a technique that comes from The Vertical of the role by Jurij Alschitz. I wrote down all of Trofimov's lines.

My first Idea was to stay with the character but bring him through time. To let him look back to how the world has changed since his time. Would he be able to believe it? What would he think of the world?

Step one #1: Understand Trofimov's world and seek for potential material to deal with in the monologue going through time.

To know why he had the thoughts he shared and where they came from I read about russian history, watched youtube videos, whereas this one was in particular very helpful - VIDEO.

I created this timeline of the most important incidences in Russian politics starting from right before Trofimov's birth.

Russian History

1861

Emancipation of the serfs in Russia by Alexander II – the liberator

1881

Alexander II was killed by a bomb of the left wing

The Church of the saviour on spilled blood is now where the liberator was fatally wounded

1881

Alexander III formed the Okhranka – secret police killing a lot of plotting revolutionary groups

1891

Sergei Witte modernised Russian economy with reforms as minister of finance. Encouraged foreign investment, especially French loans helped develop Russia’s industry and infrastructure.

Transibirian railway started construction – ended in 1916

1905

Bloody Sunday – Steelworkers asked for more workers rights and more political freedom. Troops shot more than hundred

October Manifesto – promised an assembly and new political rights including freedom of speech

1906

Russia’s first constitution

Tsar would share power with an assembly – State Duma

Tsar had the right to veto their legislation and dissolve it at any time

Stolypins Necktie

1911

Rasputin joined the family

1916

Brusilov offensive

1916

Rasputin was murdered by aristocrats possibly with British assistance

1917

losses at the front were enormous, mismanagement in cities economy led to raising prices and food shortages. In Petrograd (St. Petersburg) the workers frustration led to strikes and demonstrations.

Troops joined the protestors. Government lost control of the capital.

1917

the Tsar abdicated – end of Romanovs reign – forming of a republic with a provisional government

Workers, soldiers, and peasants elected their own councils known as the Soviets

Petrograd Soviet so powerful it became a rival government

The Bolsheviks lead by Vladimir Lenin – radical purpose to end the war, redistribution of land and transfer of power to the soviets.

In October the red guards stormed the winter palace and arrested the provisional government. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were now in charge.

Bolsheviks were a revolutionary Marxist inspired party developing the first communist state

First it had to survive one of the worlds bloodiest civil wars.

1918

new constitution sovereign socialist state

1924

new constitution sovereign socialist state

1936

new constitution federal structure

1977

new constitution federal structure

1980

until then the government was dominated at all levels by the communist party of the Soviet Union, which was all-powerful and whose head was the countries de facto leader.

Elections were between candidates chosen by the communist party.

1980

Mikhais Gorbachev - Perestroika (“restructuring”), Glasnost (“openness”) and demokratizatsiya (“democratization”) reform policies.

1988

soviet congress of people’s deputies was created, and a congress of people’s deputies was established in each republic. For the first time, non-communist could be elected, though communists still dominated the system

1990

Russian laws took precedence over soviet laws

1991

Boris Yeltsin became the republic’s first democratically elected president.

Coup in August 1991 by hardliners against Gorbachev’s reforms let to the collapse of most soviet government organizations, the abolition of the communist party’s leading role in government, and the dissolution of the party itself. Republic after Republic declared its “sovereignty”. In December Russia was established as an independent country.

1993

Currentt constitution

1999

Union State formed

2014

Crimea admitted

Step #2: Feeding the information into an interesting scenario for Trofimov to analyse in his appearance in the future

Trofimov's ideology has some parallels with communism. 1917 is a big shift in power and has a lot of material to work from. I thought about different scenarios which could be interesting to follow. For all the scenarios I wanted to use the Russian history.

SCENARIO 1

Trofimov as a time traveller. He travels to the year 2020 and sees what happened in the world. Focus on the 1917 change of power in russia. How History kept repeating itself.

SCENARIO 2

Trofimov is going through the Russian revolution and talks about it.

SCENARIO 3

I came up with the Idea to turn it around and let a time traveller go from 2020 to 1917. The Idea was to let him be against the soviets and let him be caught by them. And he tries to tell them what will happen.

SCENARIO 4

It is not clear what time the character is in. He's in prison and he claims he's in 1917 but actually he's in a psychiatry in 2020. It should blur the time and indicate that no matter what time he is in, because history keeps repeating itself. Okay, it does not repeat itself but it rhymes.

He believes he's got caught by the soviets. He tries to convince the guards outside the cell that he can save the world because he's from the future and knows what's going to happen. The reason why he talks like this is because he is a professor of Russian history and turned schizophrenic.

Step #3: First Draft

For the first draft I decided to go with scenario 4. For me it had the greatest appeal and potential. I went a bit more into detail for the character and came up with the first draft:

Step #4: Feedback from Ed Harris

# Inspirations

people still act as if they have free will.

when he realises that he has no choice, free will means next to nothing

look at the truth and choose denial

# CriticalComments

move from head to heartbased
plausible situation, plausible person
his characteristics, the audience needs to be able to connect to the character
following the stakes of the character to be able to connect. not what the words of the author say about the character and subtext.
how was he arrested?
people need to empathise with the character. The character experiences the story
One or two political points, no more than that
Lists distances the audience
Human experiences in a deeper way
Find the heart things
Experience more than explaining it
The character needs to tell a story not history
Set the experience in the present middle of an moment
Include storytelling about other people around it
Experiences the characters tell, give us a hint of their personality
Tell what the character is like, invest in the character to make him believable.