Arlekin Players’ presents Dead Man's Diary: A Theatrical Novel; In Russian with Audio English Translation

NEEDHAM, MA: The unfinished Theatrical Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (or “Dead Man’s Diary” – the preferred title of the author) is a sacred avowal of love to the theatre. It is a diary written by a scorned, full of love author that “throws himself headfirst off the Chain Bridge” as he meets the inexplicable, mysterious, comical, full of wonder world of Theatre. From May 12 thru June 4, 2017, Dead Man’s Diary: A Theatrical Novel comes to life at Arlekin Players Theatre, 368 Hillside Avenue in Needham. Performances, in Russian with English audio-translation, run Fridays at 7:30pm; Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm and 7pm. Tickets ($45/$65) are available by calling (617) 942-0022, or online at www.arlekinplayers.com.

Directed by Igor Golyak, Dead Man’s Diary: A Theatrical Novel’s original stage composition is written by Golyak and Zhenya Brodskaya, with choreography by Victor Plotnikov, a stage design by Nikolay Simonov, and an original score by Jakov Jakoulov. The 15-member cast portrays the semi-autobiographical story about a writer who fails to sell his novel, then fails to commit suicide. When the writer's play is taken up for production in a theater, literary success beckons, but he is not prepared to reckon with the grotesquely inflated egos of the actors, directors, and theater managers.

Bulgakov’s tale satirizes Stanislavski through the character Ivan Vasilievich, whose methods hinder actors' performances, reflecting Bulgakov's frustration with Stanislavski whilst attempting to stage A Cabal of Hypocrites in 1930–1936. He began work in earnest on the novel on November 26, 1936. Written in first-person point of view on behalf of a writer (Sergei Maksudov), the piece is based on Bulgakov's own experiences at the famous Moscow Art Theatre of the 1920s and 30s, and reaches its comic height in a merciless lampooning of Konstantin Stanislavsky's fashionable stage techniques. Says Maksudov, “What was more important, my life had been drained dry by love for the Independent Theatre; I was now pinned to it like a beetle to a piece of cork…” Full of affectionately drawn characters, it is a brilliant, absurdist tale of the exhilaration and black desperation wrought on one man by his turbulent love affair with the theatre.

Dead Man’s Diary: A Theatrical Novel runs May 12 thru June 4 at 368 Hillside Avenue in Needham. Performances, in Russian with English audio-translation, run Fridays at 7:30pm; Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm and 7pm. Tickets ($45/$65) are available by calling (617) 942-0022, or online at www.arlekinplayers.com.