AU’s production of Three Sisters, a play written by Anton Chekhov, will begin it’s five-show run on Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hugo Young Theatre.

The show will consist of four different 7:30 p.m. performances and one 2 p.m. performance on Feb. 17.

This is the second show put on by the theatre department this year, the first one being Little Women back in early November. They will close out this school year with a performance of Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery in early April.

Three Sisters centers around three Russian sisters in their early 20s that live in a small town, but dream of moving back to the big city of Moscow in hopes that it will lead them to a better life. They are constantly left with the question ‘what am I going to do with my life?’, and hope that pursuing a life in Moscow will help answer that question and many more.

Emily Schordock, who is playing the oldest sister Olga Sergeyevna Prozorov, says that “this show is a great introduction to Chekhov. If you’ve ever wanted to see a good classic, this is your chance.”

This is a four-act play that dives into the struggles of love, fantasy, and the desire for a better future.

Teresa Durbin-Ames, the director of Three Sisters, says that “for college students, these [characters] are people who are facing the same challenges they are facing in terms of ‘what am I gonna do with my life.’”

According to Durbin-Ames, the choice to put on Three Sisters this year wasn’t random.

Konstantin Stanislavski, a former actor, director, and co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre where Chekhov first produced Three Sisters, is the creator of the modern acting method that is taught to theatre students here at AU.

The amount of familiarity that the students have with this acting method made it “an educational choice and a theatre history choice” as one of this year’s plays, Durbin-Ames said.

The cast is made up of 15 members and auditions for the show were held back in early September. While the roles were assigned many months ago, official stage rehearsals didn’t begin until Jan. 6.

“You’re gonna see some new folks that you’ve never seen on our stage before in this show cause it’s a little bit larger, but you’re also gonna see a lot of people that you saw in Little Women,” Durbin-Ames said.

The roles of the three sisters are played by Ivey Buffenmyer, Schordock, and Macy Campbell.

Campbell, who is playing the youngest sister Irina Sergeyevna Prozorov, says that she would describe the show as “classic, raw and emotional.”

“I am looking forward to the audience seeing the progression of all these characters as the years pass by them,” Campbell said.

This is Campbell’s fourth production at AU and emphasized how Three Sisters is “about relatable people with real-life problems, not like the typical plays where people get what they want and live happily ever after.”

Durbin-Ames went on to say how the messages of this play can be very applicable to the lives of anyone that comes to see it.

“That to me is what theatre is all about,” Durbin-Ames said. “You get to see somebody do some of these things and maybe you walk away and think about your own life and some things that you could do differently.”

For ticket information, call 419-289-5950 or visit www.ashland.edu/tickets