The very idea, ma'am! The Lord preserve us from such a thing. And let me tell you too, Marfa Ignatievna, ma'am, a vision I had in Moscow. I went out early in the morning, it was just dawn, and on a high, very high house, on the roof, I saw someone standing, with a black face. You understand whom I mean. And he kept moving his hands, as though he were scattering something, but nothing fell. Then I divined that he was the enemy sowing tares, and the people in their blindness see it not, and gather them up. And that is why they run to and fro so, and the women among them are all so thin, and never get plump and comfortable, but always look as if they had lost something, or were looking for something, and that careworn they are, you feel sorry for them. (MME. KABANOVA: Anything is possible, my dear, in our times, one can't be surprised at anything.) Hard times they are, Marfa Ignatievna, ma'am, very hard. Already the time has begun diminishing. (MME. KABANOVA: How is that? diminishing, my dear?) We, of course--how should we observe it in our blindness and vanity? but wise people have observed that time has grown shorter with us. Once the summer and the winter dragged on endlessly, you got tired of looking for the end of them, but now, before one's time to look about one, they've flown. The days and the hours still seem the same, of course; but the time keeps growing shorter and shorter, for our sins. That's what the learned folk say about it.

Feklusha Monologue from The Storm

Rehearse Feklusha's monologue