This series of posters, created for Scherzi — a theatrical staging of Anton Chekhov’s one-act comedies (The Bear, A Marriage Proposal, and A Tragic Role) — explores the tragicomic essence of everyday life through irony and subtle visual cues.
Rather than focusing on the protagonists’ overt drama, the illustrations highlight secondary elements — the caged canary, the indifferent dogs, the portrait of the deceased husband — which quietly upstage the human characters. These details, absurd yet tender, become symbolic anchors that both diminish and illuminate the human struggle, echoing Chekhov’s vision of fragile individuals entangled in trivial conflicts.
The result is a visual narrative that blends humor with melancholy, borrowing from theatrical lighting and composition to achieve immediacy, while inviting viewers to notice layers of irony and meaning at a closer look. In these images, life’s chaos is not resolved, but gently mocked — just as Chekhov himself might have intended.
