A few months after Gábor Székely’s appointment as the chief director of the Szigligeti Theatre in Szolnok in 1971, the premiere of The Seagull opened a new chapter not only in the life of a small rural theatre, but also in the stage history of Chekhov’s plays in Hungary. The production immediately attracted national attention, and together with Gábor Zsámbéki’s staging of the same play, opening in Kaposvár a few weeks earlier, prompted a reassessment of the Stanislavsky tradition, which had been a strong canon for Chekhov’s plays in Hungary during state socialism. The Seagull in Szolnok did not make any significant changes to the text of the play, yet it developed a unique reading, the exploration of which was considered primary in its reviews. Avoiding any overt updating, Székely’s mise-en-scène orchestrated the performance of The Seagull for the perceptual experience of the spectators of the 1970s and brought a turn to the decades-old conventions of playing Chekhov. The essay examines why this production occupies such a strong position in theatre history and how it could break and create tradition at the same time.