In 1817 the English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” to describe what we do when we believe in the truth and reality of a work of fiction in order to enjoy it, such as a novel, a poem, a play, a movie, or whatever shape such a story-telling may take.  Coleridge was especially interested in justifying and encouraging his fellow romantic poets to return fantastic elements to their poetry. But the concept, which can already be found in Greek and Roman writers, has proved useful in discussing how and why we accept any fiction as real enough to engage our emotional reactions and intellectual analysis as if we are responding to something real and true, at least for a time, though we know it is not.

If you would like to give your willing suspension of disbelief a good workout, I would encourage you to visit the Upstream Theatre’s production of the Brazilian playwright Pedro Bricio’s An Orchard for Chekhov in the Marcelle Theatre. (I would encourage you to see it in any case.) You will see on the stage Patrick Huber’s set, with up left a table and chairs, down right a bench, a partial wall dividing them. No need for  “suspension of disbelief” there, is there? But as soon as the play begins, you are asked to believe that this is not some kind of habitat in St. Louis but an apartment in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and a patio beside a street. Sally Edmundson is piling up luggage near the street. But she is not Sally Edmundson, she is Alma Duran, a Brazilian actor, trying to hail a cab to take her and her luggage to her daughter’s apartment. When the cabbie finally stops, they converse, of course, in Portuguese, the language of Brazil. But we hear them in English, thanks to the translator Steven K. Smith. So our suspension must grow.

We next see a couple in the dining area. It’s Alma’s daughter Isadora, a medical doctor,  and her husband Otto, a police officer, who has placed his pistol on the table while he eats. Well no, it’s really Jocelyn Padilla and Aaron Orion Baker, two actors, but we must suspend our belief in that reality so that Padilla and Baker can continue the fiction of Isadora and Otto. They are quite convincing as Isadora and Otto. And their Portuguese sounds like English.

They are joined by a young woman, Lala, who is looking for Isadora’s mother Alma because she wants to be an actor and she wants to take acting lessons from Alma. Well no, she is really also an actor named Sarah Wilkinson. Or not really, because again we must suspend our disbelief in Sarah’s Lala, because she too is quite convincing, as Lala.

But if playwright Bricio has not strained our suspension abilities enough, he adds one more character to suspend them further. Alma meets a man who says he is Anton Chekhov. Yes, that Anton Chekhov, the great Russian writer, dead for a century now after writing his final play, The Cherry Orchard, the play that Alma wants to produce and star in to revive her career. Can he be who he says he is? Who must suspend disbelief now? He too speaks Portuguese that sounds like English. And he is really (really?) the great St. Louis African-American actor J. Samuel Davis. So was Chekhov an African-Russian-Brazilian? What beliefs and what disbeliefs must we suspend here?

As I recall, Chekhov only appears when Alma is alone. She tells her family and friends about him, but they never meet him. Is he a creation of her need to do his play The Cherry Orchard?  How real can our fictions be? How much can they move and shape our lives?

Even Otto’s pistol has a Chekhovian reference, given his dictum that if a firearm appears in the first act of a play, it must be fired by the final act. That gets its own kind of suspension.

A number of people helped us suspend our disbelief, as usual in the theatre: Director Philip Boehm, Assistant Director Lizi Watt, Scenic Designer Patrick Huber, Costume Designer Michele Friedman Siler, Lighting Designer Steve Carmichael, Sound Designer Kristi Gunther, Properties Rachel Seabaugh, Scenic Painter Jamey Pearson, Production Stage Manager Patrick Siler, Samba Consultant Marick Starick, Board Operator Izzy Lambert, House Manager Monica Roscoe, Assistant Stage Manager Alexis Peterson, Production Manager Gus Kickham, Technical Director Brian Macke, Master Electrician Tony Anselmo, Photographer ProPhotoSTL, Graphic Art/Website Sleepy Kitty/Paige Brubeck, Program Edit Madison Bouse, Tech Crew Sarah Novak, RAF Facilities Emily Hoffman & Soozi Mikulas. 

Our imagination can be pretty amazing.

—Bob Wilcox

Photo by ProPhotoSTL.com
From the left, Sally Edmundson and J. Samuel Davis in An Orchard for Chekhov.