Congratulations to HSBA Member Arlekin. Their production of OUR CLASS Brings Home 4 Big Wins at the 2025 Lucille Lortel Awards last weekend!
May 7, 2025 Needham, MA – ARLEKIN, the immigrant theater company founded and led by Ukrainian-born, Jewish artistic director Igor Golyak, and his producing partner Sara Stackhouse, received a stunning sweep Sunday night at the 40th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards for outstanding achievement Off-Broadway, taking home the most awards of any production for 2025 for Our Class, which was co-produced with MART Foundation. The Our Class team received four wins – Outstanding Revival, Outstanding Director for Igor Golyak, Outstanding Ensemble, and Outstanding Design for Jan Pappelbaum. This victory comes during the same week that the company celebrates their 15th Anniversary with a 1-night-only May 10 event in Harvard Square, and a week before Arlekin begins rehearsals for Our Class Boston, coming to the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts June 13-22, featuring international superstar Chulpan Khamatova.
Arlekin has been on a meteoric rise since 2020 when their piece State vs Natasha Banina went viral worldwide during the pandemic, garnering Arlekin’s first New York Times critics pick and launching a period of growth, expansion and bold new work in Boston, online worldwide, and off-Broadway in New York, leading to the New York premiere of Our Class, produced in partnership with the MART Foundation at Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2024, which sold out and extended, then transferred to Manhattan’s Classic Stage Company for an eight week run this past fall. About Our Class, the New York Times said, “Golyak is among the most inventive directors working in the United States.” The Lortel awards add to the growing recognition of Golyak as a leading artist and Arlekin as a significant and unique contributor to the American theater.
“I am stunned and honored by these awards. What an incredible recognition of Our Class and all we are doing at Arlekin,” says Golyak. “I am grateful to my collaborators, to Jan Pappelbaum, the beautiful cast, to Tadeusz Slobodzianek and Norman Allen for writing this play, to Sofia Kapkova of MART Foundation and Arlekin’s Sara Stackhouse for making this project happen. All I want is to make inventive theater that touches souls and bring some of my artistry and approach to the American theater, and with Our Class and this acknowledgement, my dream is coming true.”
Our Class is the timely story of ten Polish classmates — five Jewish and five Catholic — who grow up as friends and neighbors, then face the awakening of hatred, with life and death consequences. Inspired by real life events surrounding a 1941 pogrom in a small Polish village, this shocking, timely story follows their lives from childhood through eight decades. exploring themes of friendship, betrayal, and the consequences of hatred.
The Outstanding Ensemble award was received by the original New York cast: Gus Birney, Andrey Burkovksiy, José Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Elan Zafir, Stephen Ochsner, Alexandra Silber, Richard Topol and Ilia Volok. Jan Pappelbaum of the Schaubhene in Germany received the Outstanding Scenic Design Award, Igor Golyak was the recipient of the Outstanding Director Award, and MART Foundation, Sofia Kapkova, Co-Executive Producer, and Arlekin, Igor Golyak Artistic Director & Sara Stackhouse, Co-Executive Producer, in association with Jadow Productions, received the coveted Outstanding Revival Production Award.
The Cast & Team of Our Class New York at the 40th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards, Sunday May 4, 2025
Next, Arlekin brings Our Class to Boston. Cited in The Wall Street Journal’s “Best Theater of 2024” list, this contemporary production of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s masterpiece will be performed for 11 shows only. Helmed by international star of stage and screen Chulpan Khamatova (Good Bye Lenin!, The Master and Margarita), and features Jeremy Beazlie (Tartuffe, The Gaaga), Ryan Czerwonko (TV: The Endgame, Chicago Med), Zach Fike Hodges (BEDLAM’s Angels in America), Deborah Martin (The Dybbuk, Twelfth Night), Gene Ravvin (The Dybbuk, WITNESS), Kirill Rubtsov (Bovary, Kynaston), Gigi Watson (Just Tell No One, The Merchant of Venice), and, reprising their roles from the New York premiere, Richard Topol (Indecent, Our Class, The Merchant of Venice) as Abram and Ilia Volok (Diary of a Madman, Our Class, The Gaaga) as Wladek. The actors take on the roles of their characters starting as school children and following them throughout their lives. See full cast bios. Directed by Igor Golyak and produced by Sara Stackhouse, it runs at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts for 11 performances only, June 13-22 with evening performances at 7pm; Sat/Sun matinees at 2pm; Saturday, June 14 at 7pm includes a premiere ticket and a ticket to the opening night party. Press Night is Monday, June 16 at 7pm.
For full information visit www.arlekinplayers.com
LORTEL WINNER BIOS:
Igor Golyak (Outstanding Director) is the founder and artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre & Zero Gravity (zero-G) Theater Lab. He directed the New York premiere of Our Class at BAM in 2024, and conceived and directed The Orchard starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Hecht Off-Broadway in 2022. Most recently, he directed the remount of Our Class followed by The Merchant of Venice Off-Broadway at Classic Stage Company, and adapted and directed a US premiere of The Dybbuk at Boston’s historic Vilna Shul. A global leader in the virtual theater movement, in 2023 he directed Just Tell No One, part of the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings/CITD, at Lincoln Center featuring Jessica Hecht, Bill Irwin, and David Krumholz, and directed the virtual elements of Sasha Denisova’s The Gaaga (US premiere). During the pandemic, he conceived and directed WITNESS, chekhovOS /an experimental game/, and State vs. Natasha Banina, each of which became an international virtual theater sensation, receiving multiple New York Times Critics Picks. His work has been recognized with Elliot Norton Awards for The Gaaga, The Orchard, The Seagull, The Stone, and Dead Man’s Diary, and a special citation for extraordinary artistic innovation during the pandemic. Golyak is a current Mandel Fellow and winner of a Broadway World Best Director Award and multiple This Week In New York Pandemic Awards. He directed The Merchant of Venice for Actors’ Shakespeare Project and has directed and taught at Northeastern University, HB Studios, Boston Conservatory, the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts/Middlesex University, Moscow Specialized Institute for the Arts, and the ARBOS Theatre Festival. Golyak is from Ukraine and received a master’s degree in directing from the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts and an acting degree from Moscow’s Schukin Theatre Institute (Vakhtangov Theater). He started an #ArtistsforUkraine initiative days after the war began, and his company Arlekin, a company of immigrants, has performed all over the world, including festivals in Ukraine, Yerevan, Romania, Armenia, New York City, Chicago, Lviv, Monaco, the US, Canada, and the UK, as well as the Moscow Art Theatre.
Jan Pappelbaum (Outstanding Scenic Design) was born in 1966 in Dresden. Since 2000 set designer and head of set design at the Schaubühne Berlin. A-levels, competitive volleyball and apprenticeship as a bricklayer in Leipzig. Studied architecture at what is now the Bauhaus University in Weimar, first own student theater works. From 1993 assistant to set designer Dieter Klaß for the “Urfaust-Kubus” at the Kunstfest Weimar, under the artistic direction of Manfred Karge. In this context, first works with students of the Berliner Regieinstitut, among others Andrea Moses, Tom Kühnel, Thomas Ostermeier and Robert Schuster. From 1998 permanent collaboration with Robert Schuster and Tom Kühnel as set designer at the Schauspiel Frankfurt am Main, from 1999 as head of set design at the TAT. Continuous collaboration with Thomas Ostermeier, first at the Baracke of the Deutsches Theater Berlin, which he converted into an experimental stage in 1997, then from 2000 at the Schaubühne Berlin. There since then set designs for productions by James Macdonald, Tom Kühnel, Constanza Macras, Marius von Mayenburg, Thomas Ostermeier, Armin Petras, Falk Richter, Patrick Wengenroth and Stas Zhyrkov. Parallel international work with Thomas Ostermeier in Amsterdam, Avignon, Moscow, Lausanne and Vienna. Further opera works with Andrea Moses in Berlin, Salzburg, Stuttgart, Vienna and Weimar. In addition, several exhibition architectures at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main and the Hygienemuseum Dresden, solo exhibitions of his set designs in Oslo (2009), Krakow (2011). He has led workshops in Moscow, Venice, Oslo, Ramallah, Skopje, and most recently in the summer of 2018 in Hong Kong (2018) and Skopje (2019). In the spring semester of 2023, he led a design seminar as a professor at the Università della Svizzera italiana Mendrisio. Exhibition of his photographs of international guest performance tours (Berlin, 2017). The book “Dem Einzelnen ein Ganz/A Whole for the Parts: Jan Pappelbaum. Bühnen/Stages” was published in 2006 by Verlag Theater der Zeit; the video documentation What is stage: Jan Pappelbaum shows the Westkowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) Hong Kong since 2022.
The Cast of Our Class New York (Outstanding Ensemble) See Full Bios
MART Foundation (Outstanding Revival, founded and directed by Sofia Kapkov, is a U.S.-based nonprofit that produces and supports contemporary performing arts worldwide. Focused on innovative co-productions, MART recently co-produced the acclaimed New York premiere of Our Class at BAM—named one of 2024’s best productions by The Wall Street Journal—and its encore run at Classic Stage Company. The production went on to win four 2025 Lucille Lortel Awards, including Outstanding Revival. MART has also supported Sharon Eyal’s Into The Hairy for Nederlands Dans Theater and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank at London’s Marylebone Theatre. Its collaborations span world-renowned artists and institutions, including Akram Khan, Gibney Company, Carnegie Hall, Sadler’s Wells, and Festival d’Avignon. MART is committed to presenting bold, contemporary work across theater, dance, and music on a global stage.
Arlekin (Outstanding Revival) was founded in Boston by Ukrainian-born artistic director Igor Golyak in 2009, and is now led by Golyak, who directed Our Class, and producing director Sara Stackhouse, who served as co-executive producer on Our Class. Arlekin launched its (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab in 2020. Arlekin most recently co-produced Our Class and The Merchant of Venice off-Broadway at Classic Stage Company, and the US premiere of a new adaptation of The Dybbuk at the historic Vilna Shul in Boston, starring Andrey Burkovskiy. In January 2024, they co-produced the New York premiere of Our Class at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and produced The Orchard featuring Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov both off-Broadway in New York and in Boston. Other recent productions include The Gaaga, US premiere, by Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova, and Just Tell No One at Lincoln Center with Bill Irwin, Jessica Hecht and David Krumholz in partnership with the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings project. Arlekin received worldwide acclaim, including two New York Times Critics Picks, for their virtual projects during the pandemic, including WITNESS, State vs Natasha Banina, and chekhovOS /an experimental game/ featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov as Anton Chekhov. Arlekin has received numerous awards including multiple Elliot Norton Awards from the Boston Theater Critics Association, including The Stone, The Seagull, The Orchard, and a Special Citation for innovation during the pandemic. A company of immigrants, Arlekin has toured internationally, and performs works that explore identity, culture, antisemitism, home, belonging, tradition, and finding common humanity and themes that unite us. The company is celebrating its 15th Anniversary and makes its home in Needham, MA.