Tag: Arlekin Players

Arlekin’s “The Dybbuk” Possesses Hearts and Minds

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Andrey Burkovskiy, Yana Gladkikh

‘The Dybbuk’ – Based on the play by S. Ansky. Written by Roy Chen. Additional Material by Joachim Neugroschel. Adapted by Igor Golyak and Dr. Rachel Marrill Moss. Directed and Scenic Design by Igor Golyak. Stage Management from Madison Perez. Lighting Design by Jeff Adlberg. Costume and Prop Design by Sasha Ageeva. Composition and Sound Design by Fedor Zhuravlev. Arlekin’s ‘The Dybbuk’ runs from October 30th – September 16th at The Vilna Shul. 

By Charlotte Snow 

What are we willing to risk for love? Perhaps it’s a job, a home, a previous relationship, or a lifestyle. Or, for the most ardent of lovers, perhaps we’re more than willing to risk our lives? In Arlekin’s The Dybbuk, a love story that spans the realm of the living and the dead, it uplifts and challenges the notion of ‘til death do us part.’ 

Arlekin, based in the suburbs of Needham, is a theatre company founded by immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who are driven to create and reimagine Russian theatre, with performances presented in English, Russian, or a combination of both. This production of ‘The Dybbuk’ is a remounting of the 2024 production, which garnered a pair of Elliot Norton awards.  

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Theater Mirror’s Kilian Melloy Interviews Arlekin Players’ Igor Golyak on Bringing Back ‘The Dybbuk’ for an Encore

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Arlekin Players’ Igor Golyak

Igor Golyak, the leader of Arlekin Players, is set to oversee the return of his adaptation of Roy Chen’s modern version of the classic S. Ansky play The Dybbuk to Boston. The play was a sensation last year, thrilling audiences and earning accolades, including an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production. Now it returns to Beacon Hill’s Vilna Shul, the site of its earlier run — a venue that, Golyak explains in our interview, has significant resonance.

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Arlekin Players ‘Our Class’ Exposes the Danger of Erasing the Past and Repressing the Truth

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Cast of Arlekin Players’ ‘Our Class’. Photos by Irina Danilova

Arlekin Players presents Our Class. Written by Tadeusz Slobodzianek. Adapted by Norman Allen. Directed by Igor Golyak. Scenic Design by Jan Pappelbaum. Costume Design by Sasha Ageeva. Lighting Design by Jeff Adelberg. Sound Design by Ben Williams. Projection and Video Design by Eric Dunlap, Igor Golyak with Andrea Mincic. Choreography by Or Schraiber. At Boston Center for the Arts, Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, through June 22nd. 

By Linda Chin

With four 2024 Lucille Lortel Awards (Outstanding Revival, Director, Ensemble, Scenic Design) for its Off-Broadway premiere of Our Class in hand, Arlekin Players’ artistic director, Igor Golyak and producing director Sara Stackhouse have brought their production home to Greater Boston for audiences to “enjoy”. The play’s limited run at the BCA during June – Immigration Heritage Month – is timely given the 15-year-old Needham-based company’s history as an ensemble of immigrants from countries in the former Soviet Union. Written by Tadeusz Slobodzianek and adapted by Norman Allen, Our Class follows the stories of ten Polish classmates, half Jewish and half Catholic, who lived together in the small village of Jedwabne across eight decades of the 20th century.

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‘Our Class’ Confronts And Challenges Revisionist History

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Cast of Arlekin Players’ ‘Our Class’. Photos by Irina Danilova

‘Our Class’ – Written by Tadeusz Słobodzianek. Adapted by Norman Allen. Directed by Igor Golyak. Staged by Arlekin at the Calderwood Pavilion at Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, through June 22.

By Shelley A. Sackett

No one can take his audience on an emotional and artistic roller coaster like Igor Golyak, founder and artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre & Zero Gravity (Zero-G) Theater Lab. With “Our Class,” in production through June 23 at the Calderwood Pavilion, he introduces us to characters we initially relate to and bond with, spins an artistically ingenious cocoon, and then tells a tale that rips our heart to shreds and leaves us too overwhelmed to even speak.

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Documentary theater asks: Where do unwanted people go? – An interview with Arlekin Players’ Igor Golyak

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by Shelley A. Sackett

(This interview originally appeared in the Jewish Journal)

When Igor Golyak, founder and artistic director of Needham’s Arlekin Players Theatre, was researching “The Merchant of Venice,” he was smacked in the face by the discovery that Jews have been on the move throughout the span of their existence.

Their constant migration reminded him of his own family, which emigrated in 2004 from Ukraine.

Then, on July 1, Brighton Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was stabbed. Golyak attended a meeting with other Jewish refugees and he remembers someone asking, “Where do we go now?”

“My family came here to escape antisemitism. What I suddenly understood is that there is no escaping antisemitism,” Golyak said.

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