Arlekin Players Theatre

Arlekin’s 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 Arlekin’s 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, Arlekin’s 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 GAAGA for its 2023 US Premiere - the hybrid production put Putin and his cronies on trial and was acclaimed by critics and audiences in-person in Boston and virtually throughout the globe.

In Jan/Feb 2024, OUR CLASS premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Golyak was cited by the NY Times as “among the most inventive directors working in the United States.” The play will be remounted alongside Golyak’s hailed adaptation of MERCHANT OF VENICE in Fall 2024 in residence at Classic Stage, NY.

In June 2024, Arlekin mounted an acclaimed site-specific production of THE DYBBUK at The Vilna Shul in Boston, which sold out every performance and will be remounted in 2025.

From Boston’s suburbs, a strong immigrant perspective and artistic voice has emerged and Arlekin is increasingly recognized as a global leader in creating a new genre, a unique and vital voice for the immigrant experience of Eastern European and Ukrainian artistry, and known for new work now seen, presented and acclaimed worldwide.

Mission:

Arlekin is a company of immigrants, rooted in traditions of classical and contemporary Eastern European theater, dedicated to passionate, imaginative storytelling and new forms of theater. We seek to build connections and create shared human experience across cultures by creating powerful in person and virtual theater productions that affect and challenge diverse audiences, with a special commitment to Russian-language speaking and immigrant communities.