Seagull Fucker – Jan 17-19
ABOUT
Moscow, 2022. Colliding with the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, a theater director’s staging of The Seagull is irrevocably compromised… but that’s just the beginning. Seagull Variations is a highly imaginative theatrical production that centers on an artist’s struggle to survive censorship and the personal cost of resistance. Produced by En Garde Arts, written by Eli Rarey, and inspired by the life of Creator/Director Sasha Molochnikov, Seagull Variations contemplates the realities of creating both art and a life far from one’s home and acknowledges that the fight to preserve artistic intent is, in fact, a universal struggle. It is a poignant story of freedom and destruction and people trying to hold on to who they are.
CREATIVE TEAM
Sasha Molochnikov: Director
Eli Rarey: Writer
Sandro Gurdzhua: Sound Operator
Alina Kozlova: Set Design and Props + Wardrobe
Kristina Kharlashkina: Costume Design
Dan Safer: Choreographer, Witness Relocation Project
Matthew Zwiebel: Music Director
Noize MC: Lyrics & poetry
Stephanie Klaper I Klapper Casting: Casting
Make Up & Hair: GWT @godina.worldwide.team
Olga Akueva: Associate Producer
Maria Kovalenko: Assistant Director
Olivia Fletcher: Production Stage Manager
Emma Battle: Assistant Stage Manager
Erica Zippel Schnitzer: Line Producer/ Production Manager
CAST
Stella Baker: Nico
Andrey Burkovskiy: MC/Barry
Paten Hughes: Pickle/Masha
Quentin Lee Moore: Ivan/Jack
Zuzanna Szadkowski: Olga
Eric Tabach: Kon
Elan Zafir: Anton/Sorry
DANCERS
Ilan Bachrach: Dancer
John Maria Gutierrez: Dancer
Rebecca Sandlin: Dancer
Kim Savarino: Dancer
CREDITS
Alexander Molochnikov is a Russian filmmaker and theater director who has been actively working in Moscow for the past decade and relocated to New York in 2022. At the age of 22, he directed 19.14 Cabaret, an anti-war play about World War I at the Moscow Art Theater of Chekhov. This production was nominated for Russia’s prestigious theater award, the Golden Mask. From 2014 to 2018, he produced two more significant works at the MAT. One of these, 19.17 The Bright Path, served as a commentary on the totalitarian regime, the revolution of 1917, and contemporary Russia. His debut film, Myths, featured some of Russia’s most renowned actors at the time, including Ivan Urgant, Fedor Bondarchuk, Ksenia Rappoport, and Sergey Bezrukov. His second film, Tell Her,an autobiographical family drama, filmed in St. Petersburg and LA, was nominated at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and the Kinotavr festival in Sochi, receiving an enthusiastic response in theaters. From 2018 to 2021, he worked at the Bolshoi Theater, where he directed Carlo Menotti’s opera Medium and the ballet The Seagull, which won the Golden Mask award for “Best Ballet of the Year.” Just before the outbreak of war, he began filming the series The Monastery, which he both wrote and directed, that ultimately became the highest-grossing series of the year in Russia. While filming, Molochnikov publicly denounced the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, which now prevents him from returning to Russia. In 2024-2025, he plans to direct Crime and Punishment at the Gesher Theater in Tel Aviv and to shoot a short film about political prisoner Sasha Skochilenko.
En Garde Arts
Founded by Executive Artistic Director Anne Hamburger in 1985, En Garde Arts is the award-winning pioneer of New York City’s site-specific theatre movement. En Garde Arts has a rich, impactful history of using the city as our stage to create, to produce, and present bold theatrical experiences that reach across artistic, physical and social boundaries. En Garde Arts has partnered with theatres and business improvement districts in New York and around the country to bring our work into new communities including: Baryshnikov Arts Center, La Mama, NYTW, BAM and the Vineyard Theatre. Our work has toured to venues around the country including La Jolla Playhouse, community centers in downtown San Diego, the Kennedy Center and to Fort Hood army base in Killeen, Texas. In 2025, En Garde Arts is supporting six shows in development for over 50 writers, composers, directors, and performers through our multiple one-of-a-kind residency programs that each develop new work from the ground up. As creative archaeologists in partnership with artists, we embark on illuminating the stories of a city bringing audiences to unexpected places in new and innovative ways. www.engardearts.org
Part of Under The Radar, the annual festival of experimental theater.
Under the Radar is the United States’ premier festival of experimental theater and performance art. As a long-time New York City-based platform for cutting-edge work hailing from around the globe. Produced by ArKtype with Festival Director Mark Russell, UTR has been reimagined in its 20th annual season as a city-wide celebration that incisively speaks to our moment. Rather than being tied to a single host institution, Under the Radar’s current iteration is curated collaboratively with an array of renowned arts organizations and curators, each harnessing the connective nature of the festival format to introduce some of the world’s most innovative multidisciplinary voices to wider audiences. The 2025 edition of UTR will include over 33 distinct programs at 24 theater spaces, presenting more than 250 performances in only 16 days from January 4 to 19. The depth, breadth and excellence of this year’s festival serves as proof that collaboration can power the American theater through this era of existential crisis into a reinvigorated future of conjoined artists ready to embrace diversity, challenge and reinvention.
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