Arlekin Players Theatre

Arlekins company of immigrants is led by Igor Golyak, a Jewish director born in Ukraine. For 9 years, it grew a local audience for plays staged in Russian at its Needham, MA studio. In year 10, Arlekin performed in English and swept the 2020 Boston Elliot Norton Awards. Then COVID hit and Arlekin premiered STATE VS NATASHA BANINA: a free, live virtual theater event that went viral and received a NYTimes Critics Pick. The production launched Arlekins Zero Gravity Virtual Theatre Lab, which has since produced CHEKHOVOS (NYT Critics Pick, w/Jessica Hecht & Mikhail Baryshnikov), and WITNESS, a documentary about antisemitism and Jewish migration. Next, Arlekins THE ORCHARD featured Baryshnikov, Hecht, and an international design team that combined animation, robotics, gaming, and other technologies to form a hybrid in-person/virtual production at Baryshnikov Arts Center (NYC) and Emerson Paramount (Boston). Arlekin commissioned Ukrainian-born playwright Sasha Denisova to write/direct THE...