As a stagestruck boy, Anton Chekhov defied school regulations to attend the local playhouse in Taganrog. (He and his friends disguised themselves with false beards and glasses to sit in the gallery.) Later, he came to see Russian theatre as “the venereal disease of the cities.” “I . . . (Subscription required.)
SOURCE: The New Yorker at 12:00AM on December 5, 2011