Show One Productions, The Cherry Orchard Festival and Arlekin’s Zero Gravity Lab present 

chekhovOS

/an experimental game/

A newly-conceived Live Interactive Virtual Theater experiment hosted on .ART

chekhovOS /an experimental game/, is a performance experiment in development by Arlekin’s Artistic Director, Igor Golyak, who has been a leading innovator of virtual theater since the start of the pandemic. His recent State vs. Natasha Banina was a Critic’s Pick in The New York Times by Maya Phillips who declared “The verdict is in:  the virtual can, in fact, be an effective new stage for theater.” 

Golyak’s latest work fuses film, theater, and video game technology to create a new medium where viewers are able to interact with the performers. Inspired by Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and drawing from Chekhov’s letters, this interactive online theater experience accesses the operating system behind both Chekhov’s computer and the world in which his characters live, searching for happiness.

The cast comprises a cadre of well-known stage, television, and film actors including: 

• Ranevskaya – Jessica Hech; 
• Gaev – Mark Nelson;
• Varya – Anna Baryshnikov; 
• Anya – Melanie Moore;
• Lopakhin – Nael Nacer;
• Fiers – Jeffrey Hayenga;
• Natasha Prozorov – Darya Denisova; 
• Charlotta – Anna Bortnick; 

With Mikhail Baryshnikov as Anton Chekhov

.

chekhovOS /an experimental game/ is a work-in-progress created during the pandemic, a way for artists to work through the themes of the play, the encroaching virus, and a moment of change in the world around us.  The project was developed in the new and emerging genre of virtual theater at Arlekin’s Zero Gravity (zero-G) Lab from a small but mighty group of collaborators, helmed by Igor Golyak. This experimental sharing constitutes Phase One of a larger hybrid (live/virtual) chekhovOS project in development for 2022.

Schedule:

• Sunday, June 20 – 8:00pm ET – New York | Canada

• Thursday, June 24 – 8:00pm ET – New York | Canada

Followed by LIVE talkback with members of the cast & creative team

Running Time: 1 hour 45 minutes, including talkback

Interesting to know:

The Cherry Orchard | 10 things you didn’t know

This experimental sharing constitutes Phase One of a larger hybrid (live/virtual) chekhovOS project in development for 2022, and is made possible with generous support from producing sponsor .ART, ArtsEmerson, Baryshnikov Arts Center, BroadBand Collaborative, Cherry Orchard Festival Foundation, Fooksman Family Foundation, Meghan Coleman, Robin Hanley, ZiphyCare, gifts from Arlekin’s Zero Gravity Kickstarter Campaign and Aximmetry Technologies Ltd., the official software provider for Arlekin’s Zero Gravity (zero-G) Lab.