As we approach our 15th anniversary celebration this May, I thought I'd share the strange, stumbling journey of how our theater company came to be...
Fifteen years ago, I was going to be rich. I had committed myself fully to selling Yellow Pages ads. It was going to be my American dream—I would make money, lots of money. This was 2009, and I had no idea the Yellow Pages would soon become ancient history, like a phonebooth or a fax machine.
But my wife at the time was an actress. Or is an actress. She wanted to act. And when your spouse wants something badly enough, you figure out how to make it happen, even if it means derailing your promising career in Yellow Pages ad sales.
So I gathered some Russian-speaking immigrants, just regular people who had maybe done some community skits, nothing professional. I told them: "Give me nine months. You will know nothing, but stick with me."
That nine-month commitment somehow turned into fifteen years.
I divorced the wife but kept the theater.
(She's going to perform in our 15th anniversary celebration, but it's complicated. Better to keep separate, those types of things.)
For ten years, we performed mostly in Russian in our submarine—that's what the American people call it. The "real American people," the ones who speak like you, not like me—they discovered our "Russian submarine" hidden in our studio above what looks like a dental office in Needham. Middle of nowhere. What the hell, right?
They found us. I still don't know how. Maybe they were lost.
During the pandemic, I became a tech geek. I taped together like six pieces of software, put the baby to bed, locked the dog in a different room, and created a show called "State vs. Natasha Banina" from my apartment. With security cameras. It went viral. I still don't understand why.
Suddenly artistic directors from all over the country—then the world—were watching our little home experiment. Baryshnikov came (virtually). Jessica Hecht came. They probably thought: "Who is this crazy Ukrainian making theater in his living room while the world is falling apart?"
Then Baryshnikov invited me to New York. We created "chekhovOS," where characters are stuck in Chekhov's operating system with complete loss of agency, desperately wanting to escape—basically a perfect metaphor for the pandemic.
Since then, it's been a whirlwind. The Orchard at Baryshnikov Arts Center. Lincoln Center. BAM. Our Class. Merchant of Venice. Suddenly, the Wall Street Journal is calling our work some of the best theater of 2024, and I'm thinking, "They must be confusing us with someone else."
Now we're fifteen, trying to figure out how to lay tracks under our bullet train that defies gravity. Because sometimes, we forget we need tracks. It's risky business creating at zero gravity.
We're artists first. Everyone who works here. Even the board, in a way. We don't just "put on plays." We create experiences. We are, at our core, an ensemble, a collective of passionate souls who believe in the power of collaboration, experimentation, and pushing the boundaries of what's possible. We're building something that transcends traditional models of theater.
So as we celebrate fifteen years of this accident that became Arlekin, I think about those Yellow Pages I never got to sell, and I'm grateful for the submarine that emerged in Needham instead.
Join us for our 15th Anniversary Celebration on May 10th, featuring Jessica Hecht and honoring the extraordinary people who have made our journey possible.
Then don't miss OUR CLASS, starring international sensation Chulpan Khamatova, running June 13-22 at the Calderwood Pavilion at Boston Center for the Arts.
More information at arlekinplayers.com
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