Arlekin Players Presents JUST TELL NO ONE - A Multi-Media Staged Reading

Arlekin Players, an award-winning, artist-driven theater company helmed by Ukrainian-born artistic director Igor Golyak, today announces a special one-night multimedia staged reading - Just Tell No One - hosted by The Huntington in Boston on April 27, 2023, 7:30pm ET in the Maso Studio.

The piece, directed by Golyak, was presented as a multimedia, site specific staged reading by Lincoln Center in March and will be developed into a fully realized hybrid (live and virtual) production for the 24-25 season. The event at The Huntington is the next step in its development. Golyak's last project in both New York and Boston was The Orchard Off-Broadway with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Hecht which played at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Spring 2022 and then at ArtsEmerson in November 2022. Known for his inventive artistic work and technically dazzling productions, Golyak's staged reading of Just Tell No One will be immersive with a runway stage, intimate seating, multiple BirdDog PTZ cameras, a forest of flatscreen monitors, and video effects. The cast includes Allyn Burrows, Adrianne Krstansky, Eliot Purcell, Gene Ravvin, Garrett Sands, Dennis Trainor Jr. & Gigi Watson. This dynamic cast has joined forces with Arlekin to raise awareness and visibility for the incredible work of Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings, a project of the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD) Hope Initiative. Just Tell No One is a composition developed by Golyak using excerpts from three plays: Bad Roads by Natal'ya Vorozhbit, translated by Sasha Dugsdale, Three Rendezvous by Natal'ya Vorozhbit, translated by John Freedman with Natalia Bratus, and Just Tell No One, from the full-length play Night Devours Morning by Oksana Savchenko, translated by John Freedman. This beautifully written material reveals the human consequences of war. It's intimate, tender, brutal and darkly funny, illuminating a part of the world where an incomprehensible set of rules is at play, and people struggle to make sense of the complexity of one another with life and death consequences. This multimedia reading immerses the audience in these human stories and images of conflict so exquisitely painful they can no longer be perceived as real.

"There are very talented theater-makers in Ukraine, and this is a critical moment to bring Ukrainian art out of the shadows and celebrate it. Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings is incredible, shining a light on the voices and perspectives of these gifted Ukrainian playwrights and I'm honored to be part of it." says Golyak. His producing partner Sara Stackhouse adds, "Igor was born in Ukraine and he brings a unique artistic point of view to the material. The Ukrainian people are living through an unfathomable time and in a world we don't understand. These plays - this project- they are important to witness and experience right now. We are grateful to bring this reading of Just Tell No One to our hometown with the support of The Huntington, CITD, and this amazing cast."

To create the piece, Golyak and Stackhouse enlisted the visual dramaturgical mind of designer Irina Kruzhilina (New York) and a collaborative team including video and effects designer Eric Dunlap (Berlin) and sound designer Eric D. Clark (Berlin).

The event is free, with limited seating - tickets can be reserved via www.arlekinplayers.com. Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings is led by playwright/journalist/translator John Freedman, in partnership with Philip Arnoult of the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD). The reading is supported by Huntington Theatre, BirdDog Cameras, and The MART Foundation. Donations to support Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings are requested when reserving tickets.

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