Immigrant Accounts comes to life on stage February 2 – March 4

NEEDHAM, MA: Arlekin Players Theatre proudly presents a piece of documentary theatre entitled МЫ-US.

Performances run from February 2 through March 4 at Arlekin Players’ home at 368 Hillside Avenue in Needham. Performances are in Russian with audio-translation in English.

This is the theatre’s first foray into documentary theatre. The devised piece is based on a whopping 213 immigrant accounts from the Russian/American Boston community. These personal stories are a window into the human experience, inviting the audience to live through the speakers’ eyes, if only for a short time. Diving into issues surrounding identity, home, and assimilation, the script preserves the exact words (verbatim) of the individuals interviewed. The accounts are made by recognizable and non-recognizable members of the community who bare their souls by sharing their views on life (good and bad) in their new homeland.

Directed by Igor Golyak, and script by Lyubov Mulmenko. The show features a stage design by Nikolay Simonov, choreography by Victor Plotnikov, a stage design by Nikolay Simonov with a 16-member cast.

МЫ-US runs February 2 through March 4 at 368 Hillside Avenue in Needham. Performances, in Russian with English audio-translation, take place Fridays at 7:30pm; Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm and 7pm. Tickets ($45/$65) are available by calling (617) 942-0022, or online on www.vendini.com.

Arlekin Players Theatre was created in Boston in 2009 and has since toured to New York, Chicago, and Hartford, as well as to several international festivals. Arlekin takes strong pride in their emphasis on self-identity; they are a company of immigrants performing works that play on the ideas of cross-culture, home, and traditions, challenging the idea of nationality, and finding common themes that unite us all. Performances are in Russian, with simultaneous translation into English. The company makes its home in Needham, MA.

About the Production Team

Igor Golyak graduated from the Schukin Theatre Institute in Moscow in 2002 with a specialization in acting.  While attending the school, Igor acquired such awards as “Best Student Performance” at the Yaroslavl Theatre Festival for his role in The Portrait, and “Best Actor Award” in the Vienna Theater Festival for his role in the Diary of a Madman.  Upon graduation, he was accepted to “Teatru Nikitskih Vorot” and performed with the theatre for two years.  At the same time, he acquired a professional teaching/ directing degree from the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts in Moscow.  Igor has taught seminars at Wellesley College, Russian Academy of Theatre Arts/Middlesex University, Moscow Specialized Institute for the Arts, ARBOS Theatre Festival, New Art Studio, and Arlekin Studio in Needham.

Lyubov Mulmenko is a scriptwriter, playwright, and prose writer living in Moscow, Russia. She has extensive experience with documentary works. She debuted in 2009 in the theater with two docudramas: Alco Novellas and The Children of Ammonia. Her play The Children of Ammonia became her first experience in “Live theatre” as a live writer. Apart from the city stories created by using the verbatim techniques, she also wrote three plays (Nil One, Appeal, Antisex). Mulmenko was invited to Finland with her fourth play (Fragments of speech) to the international laboratory for playwrights called Young Women Playwrights Around the Baltic Sea. In 2014, she made the transition to the cinema and wrote scripts for feature movies like The Hope Factory, One More Year, Call My Name. All three films were shown at dozens of Russian and European screenings. She was nominated for the Nika Award for the script of the picture The Hope Factory. She also won the Slovo award for the script of the film One more year. Lyubov Mulmenko has given lectures at the Moscow Film School of New Cinema, the Cinema Laboratory of Aleksander Sokurov, the Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Cinema and Theatre, the literature workshops of Creative Writing School, at Yale University and in the Culture Center Gorod in Munich.

Born in Kharkov City, Ukraine, Victor Plotnikov received his training at the Kiev-Ukraine School and the St. Petersburg Vaganova Ballet Academy. From 1987 to 1990, he was a soloist with Donetsk Ballet Company in the Ukraine. Plotnikov held principal dancer positions at Ballet Mississippi and Tulsa Ballet Theatre between 1990 and 1993, before joining Boston Ballet as a principal dancer in 1993, where he performed until 2006. He has danced major roles in extensive classical and contemporary ballets by many of the major choreographers, and has toured extensively in Russia and the U.S.

Award-winning designer Nikolay Simonov is a star of Russian theatre, coming from Moscow to design this production. A graduate of the scenery art faculty of the M. B. Grekov Art School in Rostov-on-Don, Simonov started working at the Theatre of the Young Spectator in Vologda, later moved to the Krasnodar Drama Theatre, and in 1990 continued on to the Rostov Academic Youth Theatre, where he worked as chief designer for 12 years. He is currently head of scenic design of the current Moscow Art Theatre.

About Arlekin Players Theatre

In 2011, Arlekin’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Bear was the winner of the New England Regional Festival in Concord, NH, selected to move on to the national level of competition in Rochester, NY that following June. Also in 2011, while participating in the Michael Chekhov International Theatre Festival, the company won the Best Director and Best Actress Award. The Company was a guest participant of the 2012 International Festival “Golden Lion” in Lviv, Ukraine, after which Arlekin was invited to perform its production of Alexander Pushkin’s The Guest at the Moscow Art Theatre School. Performed on one of the most admired stages in Moscow, the production was greeted with a standing ovation. In 2013, Arlekin was honored to represent the United States with their production of Anton Chekhov’s The Bear at the prestigious Mondial du Théâtre in Monaco, hosted by Prince Albert.

In 2016, the show Natasha’s Dream was invited to and took part in three international theatre festivals – United Solo Festival New York (Best Projection Design award), Moscow SOLO Festival, Russia (Where they shared the stage with Robert Wilson, Romeo Castellucci and Konstantin Raikin) and HighFest Yerevan, Armenia. For more information about Arlekin Players Theatre, visit www.arlekinplayers.com.