Staged reading via Zoom of Julia Lukshina's Everybody Be Nice Oct 30 @ 2 pm EST!

Many thanks to Heidi Winters Vogel, Assistant Professor of Theater at Wabash College, for directing a staged reading via Zoom of Julia Lukshina’s one-act play Everybody Be Nice in my translation!

Please join us on Saturday, October 30th, at 2 pm Eastern time to see these wonderful actors perform this moving and hilarious piece (contact me, Annie Fisher, for the Zoom link):

• Anya Filatova, 35 years old: MYRIAM AZIZ
• Roma Filatov, Anya’s husband, 33 years old: JAMES SAVAGE
• “Owlet” Filatova, their first-grade daughter, 6 years old: TBA
• Nadya Ovsyannikova, the chair of the Parents Committee and Anya’s best friend, 38 years old: KELLI CRUMP
• “The Abuser” (Nadya’s husband), 40 years old: DAVID VOGEL
• Lev Borisovich Zaichuk, PE teacher, 67 years old: CHARLES DUMAS
• Ilyusha Belenky, Owlet’s classmate and Zaichuk’s grandson, 6 years old: TBA
• Raisa Ivanovna, Owlet’s teacher; an early childhood education specialist and Distinguished Teacher of the Russian Federation, 54 years old: JULIE DIXON
• Children playing the part of Frogs in the Mother’s Day play, approximately 6 years old: TBA
• Stage Directions read by ANNE O. FISHER

The show runs around 60 minutes. Since the purpose of this staged reading is to workshop the translation, audience members are encouraged to stick around after the reading for a talk with the author, translator, director, and actors.

If you’d like a taste of the play, check out some of Anya’s monologues (also in my translation), published in Another Chicago Magazine.

The Russian original had a staged reading in Moscow at the Lyubimovka Young Playwrights Festival in 2019. Watch that reading here, watch the post-show discussion here, and read Julia’s thoughts about the discussion here (all in Russian). If you’d like to read the original Russian, it was published in Sovremennaya dramaturgiya #1, 2020; the text is also available on Julia’s website here.

Heidi Winters Vogel’s bio: Heidi Winters Vogel is a director, improv storytelling performer and Theater faculty at Wabash College in Indiana. Virtual productions: international collaboration of The Romeo and Juliet Project, director (Organizational Theatre), The Race, director (Wabash College) CLUE, director (Crossroads Repertory Theatre) and performer of Playback Theatre for global audiences. Pre-COVID, Heidi directed professionally for Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Next Stage, Avalon Theatre Company and Unreal City, among others.