To coincide with the 150th anniversary of the birth of Anton Chekhov, author and director Yosi Wanunu and photographer Timotheus Tomicek, in co-operation with the Vienna theatre company Toxic Dreams, have created a new production of the Russian playwright’s classic Uncle Vanya, provocatively filling the broad niche between soap opera and high literature. Influenced by the European comic style and with playful model-making aesthetics, they take to the extreme the subtle and ironic subtext that is ever present in Chekhov, pitching it in blank empty voids, never in real or photographic spaces.

The book is published as part of a project lasting several years on the significance of realism in contemporary theatre.