Stanislavsky directed many of Chekhov's plays while working at the Moscow Art Theatre. Here's a letter he wrote about his experience working with Chekhov and with Three Sisters.

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The following year we staged Snow White, Doctor Stockmann, Three Sisters, and When We Dead Awaken.

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From the very start of the season, Anton Pavlovich frequently sent letters to one or another of us. He asked all of us for information about the life of the theater. These few lines from Anton Pavlovich, his constant attention, exerted, without our realizing it, a great influence on our theater which we can appreciate only now, after his death. 

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He took an interest in every detail and particularly, of course, in the repertoire. We, for our part, kept prompting him to write a play. From his letters, we knew that he was writing about military life, we knew that some regiment or other was moving from one place to another, but from these short, disconnected phrases we were able to guess what the theme of the play might be. In his letters, as in his writing, he was very laconic. We were able to assess these disconnected phrases, these scraps from his creative thought, only later, when we learned about the play itself.

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Perhaps he was finding it difficult to write; or, on the contrary, the play had long since been completed, and he could not bring himself to part with it but had put it away in his desk to mature. Whatever the reason, he did all he could to put off sending us the play. One of his excuses was that many fine plays had appeared - that Hauptmann should be staged, that Hauptmann had written another work, that he (Chekhov) was not a playwright.

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All these excuses brought us to the brink of despair, and we wrote pleading letters asking him to send his play as soon as possible, save the theater, et cetera. We ourselves did not then realize that we were forcing the creativity of a great writer.

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At last one or two acts of the play arrived, written in the familiar, small handwriting. We read them avidly, but, as is always the case with any genuinely scenic work, reading could not reveal its real value. With just two acts in our hands, we could not begin work on model sets, nor on allocating the roles, nor on any scenic preparation.

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Therefore we began all the more energetically to try to obtain the remaining two acts of the play. We finally received them, but not without a battle.

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Finally, Anton Pavlovich not only agreed to send the play but delivered it himself.

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He never read out his plays and was embarrassed and agitated if he was present while the play was being read to the performers. When the play had been read out and we begun to ask Anton Pavlovich for further clarifications, he was dreadfully embarrassed and excused himself, saying, "Listen, all I knew I have  written down there."

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Indeed, he was never able to criticize his own plays and listened with great interest, even surprise, to the opinions of others. What amazed him most of all, and what he was never, up to his death, able to accept, was that this Three Sisters, and later Cherry Orchard, reflected the serious drama of Russian life. He was sincerely convinced that it was a cheerful comedy, almost vaudeville. I cannot recall that he ever defended any other of his convictions as heatedly as this when, at that meeting, he first heard this comment on his play.

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We, of course, availed ourselves of the presence of the author to find out all the details we needed. Here, too, however, he gave us monosyllabic answers. At the time his answers seemed vague and incomprehensible to us, and it was only later that we came to understand their unusual imagery and realize that they were characteristic both of him and his work.

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When the preparatory work got underway, Anton Pavlovich began to insist that we invite a general whom he knew. He wanted the daily life of the military to be accurate to the smallest detail. Anton Pavlovich himself, as if he were a third party, someone not involved in this affair, observed our work from the sidelines.

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He was unable to help us in our work and in our search to depict the inside of the Prozorov house. We could sense that he knew this house in detail, saw it, but failed completely to notice what rooms, furniture, and objects filled it; in short, he felt only the atmosphere of each room individually but not its walls.

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Such is the writer's perception of life around him. However, this is not enough for the director, who must clearly draw and order all these details.

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It is now obvious why Anton Pavlovich laughed so benevolently and smiled with pleasure when the aims of the director and producer coincided with his own intent. He would look at the model scenery for a long time and then, having examined every detail, laugh good-naturedly. ...

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Alongside all his other anxieties about the fate of his play, he was not a little concerned about how the alarm would be conveyed in the third act, when there is a fire offstage. He wanted to illustrate to us the sound of a provincial bell tower sounding the alarm. Whenever a convenient opportunity presented itself,  he would approach one of us and with his hands, with rhythm and gesture, try to inspire us with the mood of this heart-piercing provincial alarm.

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He attended nearly all the rehearsals of his play but very rarely, cautiously, almost fearfully,
expressed his opinion. There was only one thing he insisted on energetically; here, as
in Uncle Vanya, he feared an exaggeration which would produce a caricature of provincial
life, that the military men would be turned into the usual heel clickers with jangling spurs and not be presented as simple, pleasant, good people dressed in worn, and not theatrical,
uniforms, without any theatrical adjustments, raised shoulders, rude behavior, et cetera.

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“There’s none of that,” he argued rather heatedly, “military personnel have changed,
they have become more cultured, many of them have even begun to realize that in peacetime
they should bring culture with them into remote backwaters.”

He insisted on this even more as the military community of the day, having learned that
the play was based on their way of life, were rather apprehensively awaiting its appearance
on the stage. . . .

Anton Pavlovich saw the whole repertoire of the theater and made his monosyllabic
comments which always obliged us to ponder their unexpectedness and which were never
immediately understood. It was only when some time had passed that we were able to
come to terms with them. As an example of one such comment, I can refer to the remark
mentioned earlier, which was that in the final act of Uncle Vanya Astrov whistles.

Anton Pavlovich was not even able to stay to see the dress rehearsal of Three Sisters,
as his worsening health obliged him to leave for the South, and he departed for Nice. From
there we received notes—in scene such-and-such, after the words such-and-such, add this
phrase. For example, “Balzac married in Berdichev” was one note we received from Nice.

On another occasion he suddenly sent us a short scene. These little jewels which he sent
had an extraordinarily enlivening effect on the action of the play when we introduced them
into our rehearsals and prompted the actors into genuinely experiencing their roles.

We also received the following instruction from abroad. In the fourth act of The Three
Sisters, the degenerate Andrey, talking to Ferapont as no one else was willing to talk with
him, describes what a wife is from the point of view of a provincial degenerate. It was a marvelous
monologue about two pages long. Suddenly we received a note saying that the whole
of the monologue was to be crossed out and replaced with just the phrase “A wife is a wife!”
This short phrase, if one reflects on it, covers everything that was said in the long, two page
monologue. This was typical of Anton Pavlovich, whose work was always short and
succinct. Behind each word lay a whole range of diverse moods and thoughts, about which
he said nothing but which came naturally to mind.

That explains why, although the play might be performed a hundred times, there was
not a single performance in which I did not make new discoveries in the long since
familiar text and in the emotions experienced in the role. The depth of Chekhov’s works
is inexhaustible for the thoughtful and sensitive actor.

How worried Anton Pavlovich was at the thought of the first performance of Three
Sisters can be judged by the fact that on the day before the performance he left the town where
we knew his address for an unknown destination, so as not to receive any news of the premiere.

The response to the first performance was rather enigmatic.

After the first act there were loud cries of “encore,” and the actors took about 12 curtain
calls. After the second act they went out just once. Following the third act, just a few
applauded rather timidly, and the actors could not go out onstage at all; and after the
fourth act, there was one rather feeble curtain call.

We had to stretch the truth considerably to telegraph Anton Pavlovich that the play was
“a great success.”

It was only three years after the first performance that the public gradually came to
appreciate the beauty of this fine work and began to laugh and to fall silent where the
author had intended. Each act then became a triumph.

The press also did not understand the play for some time and, however strange it may
seem, the first review we read worthy of the play was in Berlin, when we went there on tour.

In Moscow, during the first year of the production, the play was performed only a few
times and was then taken to St. Petersburg. We also expected to find Anton Pavlovich
there, but bad weather and his health prevented his coming. . . .

During that season he watched The Three Sisters and was very pleased with the
performance. However, in his opinion, we had not succeeded in capturing the sound of the
alarm in the third act. He decided to arrange it himself.Obviously he wanted to work with
the stagehands personally, do a little producing, work behind the scenes. We, of course, let
him have some stagehands.

On the day of the rehearsal he drove up to the theater with a cab driver, and the cab was
loaded with various pans, bowls, and metalware. He himself placed the stagehands in
position with these instruments, was very concerned to tell each how to strike what, and
became confused in his own explanations. He ran several times from the auditorium onto
the stage and back, but somehow it did not work.

The performance started, and Chekhov began to wait apprehensively for his alarm. The
noise was unbelievable. The result was total cacophony, with everyone striking whatever
came to hand, and it was impossible to hear what the actors were saying.

Next to the director’s box, in which Anton Pavlovich was sitting, some spectators began
to criticize first the noise, then the play and the author. On hearing such remarks, Anton
Pavlovich moved further and further back in the box and finally left it and sat modestly in
my dressing room.

“Why aren’t you watching the play, Anton Pavlovich?” I asked.

“Just listen, they’re criticizing it. It’s not very agreeable.”

So he sat the whole evening in my dressing room.