Arlekin began in 2009 as an ensemble of Boston-based immigrants from countries in the former Soviet Union, led by Igor Golyak, a Jewish director born in Kyiv, Ukraine and a current Mandel Fellow. When the pandemic forced theatre closures worldwide, Arlekin quickly pivoted and leaned into the innovative possibilities of virtual theatre, combining multiple technologies — animation, gaming, virtual environments — to create a completely new experience that the New York Times called “Ingenious.” Post-Covid, Arlekin’s experimentation continues as the company engages audiences through wildly inventive live, virtual, and hybrid (in-person and virtual simultaneously) productions, creating unique experiences and pioneering new territory by pushing the boundaries of the theatre genre through powerful artistic productions.

This launched Arlekin’s virtual-theater initiative, Zero Gravity (zero-G) Lab, which has since produced four more new virtual theater pieces including chekhovOS (another New York Times Critics Pick) with a cast led by the legendary Mikhail Baryshnikov and celebrated TV/Broadway actress Jessica Hecht (Friends/Breaking Bad), WITNESS, a world-premiere documentary developed with researchers from the US Memorial Holocaust Museum, about antisemitism and Jewish migration and drawing audiences from 55 countries, led by the US, Israel and Russia.

As audiences returned to in-person theater experiences, Arlekin next developed a critically-celebrated production of The Orchard Off-Broadway, a new adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, featuring both Baryshnikov and Hecht and the talents of an international design team (Russia, Brazil, Ukraine, Poland). It combined animation, robotics, gaming, and other technologies to form a hybrid production that ran for 31 performances at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City in Jun/Jul 2022 and a second in-person-only run at Emerson’s Paramount Theatre in Boston in Nov 2022. Golyak received a full profile and feature in the New York Times, and the show was featured on CBS Sunday Morning.

In June 2023, Arlekin produced the US Premiere of The Gaaga (The Hague), a phantasmagoria and "grotesque" — part farce, part tragedy — a futuristic trial of Vladimir Putin and his cronies. The piece was commissioned and developed by Arlekin and written and directed by award-winning Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova (while a refugee in Poland from the war in Ukraine), with Golyak directing the virtual part of the hybrid production. Denisova and Golyak shared the 2024 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Direction and Irina Krushilina’s complete transformation of an abandoned Harvard Square restaurant into a bomb shelter earned an Outstanding Scenic Design Award. National coverage included a feature in The Washington Post: as Bombs Fall in Ukraine.

Arlekin's 2025 season represents a milestone, as Arlekin celebrates its 15th Anniversary. The company’s NYC premiere of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class, co-produced in partnership with MART Foundation, transferred and opened the season at Classic Stage Company (CSC), this after its successful run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2024 as part of the Under the Radar Festival. Inspired by real life events surrounding a horrific 1941 pogrom in the small village of Jedwabne, the play gave space for a deep and meaningful dialogue between audiences, survivor’s families, and artists. This was followed by an innovative reimagining of The Merchant of Venice, adapted and directed by Golyak, completing a powerful two-play residency at CSC. Arlekin was nominated for six Lucille Lortel Awards winning four awards including best Outstanding Revival 2025.

From the suburbs of Boston, Arlekin has emerged as a global leader in art and technology, and a unique and vital voice from the immigrant experience, producing dynamic new work now seen, presented and acclaimed throughout the world.