Arlekin Players' Add NATASHA'S DREAM Matinee, Talkbacks

After two acclaimed Russian productions at Boston Playwrights' Theatre and the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, Arlekin Players' one-woman show Natasha's Dream, featuring actress Darya Denisova is returning in a translated run at the Arlekin Players Theatre, 368 Hillside Avenue in Needham, February 27 and 28, 2016. Performances are at 7:00pm, and tickets ($25/$50) are available by calling (617) 942-0022, or online at www.arlekinplayers.com. This production is for mature audiences.

Natasha's Dream is one of two plays in Yaroslava Pulinovich's 'Natasha Plays'. The plays (along with I Won!) catapulted the young playwright to prominence in theater circles in Russia. Both are compelling portraits that delve deep into the souls and the experience of two very different young women from one of Russia's provincial cities. In Natasha's Dream, a girl tells the story of her life in a small-town orphanage, and her desire to be free; to fly away and break the vicious circle of life. From the inside of her limited surroundings and the vastness of her imagination, she will make twists and turns through her unique appeal to audiences, letting them into her world where she dreams about love, family, acceptance, adjusting and her future.

Originally performed in Russian, the production has been translated into English by John Freedman. "[It] is one of the most resonant texts to have emerged in Russia over the last two or three years," noted Freedman in 2011. "[It] is an incisive look at the complex life of one teenage girl who runs up against insensitive teachers, shifty classmates, a journalist who unwittingly wins her heart, and a couple of experiences that most likely will scar her life forever." He continues, "Pulinovich's text, written when she herself was a teenager, is deceptively simple. Much more than a picture of teenage angst, it is a stinging rebuke to an insensitive society. It is a portrait in pastels - with a few strokes of dark, bloody red - of youthful dreams being offered up as a sacrifice to 'the way of the world.'"

In Natasha's Dream, the stage setting (Anastasia Grigorieva), the lighting (Mike McTeague), video (Anton Iakhontov) and music (Yury Schelkovsky, Vadim Khrapachev) are used in creative ways to support the actress in her storytelling. With the help of 3D video mapping to project images on different surfaces, the story comes to life. Directed by Arlekin Artistic Director Igor Golyak, the play explores new and unique ways of interaction between the actress and her surrounding space through this technique. Apart from the visual aspect that electrifies the set, original music was composed for this play to accentuate the design of the video and crystallize the emotional aspect of Natasha's story. Of the production said Benny Sato Ambush, Senior Distinguished Producing Director-in-Residence of Emerson College, "Their acting style and productions are of very high quality and his aesthetic as a Director is alive, often surprising, theatrically imaginative and representative of the storytelling innovation of that part of the world."

Actress Darya Denisova joined Arlekin's Studio in 2013, during which time she was also studying acting at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts in Moscow. Having played some bright and memorable roles at student showcases, Denisova made her Arlekin company's Memorial Player in 2014. 'Natasha' is her first starring role, in which she fills Pulinovich's text with of energy, destructive and creative at the same time. Simple words about love and dreams turn into a spell. Each word settling in soil and taking its germ there. Denisova absorbs the energy of her viewers, and from her first word, she is 'Natasha' in dialogue with her audience, trying to open her confined space and mind, and showing there is so much more than just pain within.

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