MEET THE CAST
Jessica Hecht,
Ranevskaya
Hecht received an Emmy Award nomination for her performance in the Netflix series Special. She has been seen on television in the limited series Super Pumped and The Loudest Voice and in her recurring roles in The Sinner, Dickinson, The Boys, and Succession. She is also recognizable to television audiences as Susan Bunch on the iconic television series Friends and Gretchen Schwarz on Breaking Bad. She has also played memorable roles on Bored to Death, High Maintenance, Falling Water, The Single Guy, and Red Oaks. Her film performances include A+, Anesthesia, J. Edgar, The Grey Zone, The Sitter, My Soul to Take, Dan in Real Life, Sideways, The Atlantic City Story and The Sunlit Night. An acclaimed stage actress, Hecht has appeared on Broadway in productions of The Price opposite Mark Ruffalo, Fiddler on the Roof opposite Danny Burstein, The Assembled Parties opposite Judith Light, Harvey opposite Jim Parsons, After the Fall opposite Carla Gugino, The Last Night of Ballyhoo opposite Paul Rudd, Brighton Beach Memoirs opposite Laurie Metcalf, Julius Caesar opposite Denzel Washington, and A View from the Bridge opposite Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance. Off-Broadway, she has appeared in King Lear opposite John Lithgow and Annette Bening, Stage Kiss opposite Sandra Oh, Three Sisters opposite Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, and at Lincoln Center Theater in Admissions for which she received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination and an Obie Award.
Mikhail
Baryshnikov,
as Firs
Born in Riga, Latvia and living in New York City, Baryshnikov has distinguished himself as an extraordinary dancer and performer in theater, television and film. In a career spanning more than 50 years, he has worked with George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and many other illustrious choreographers and directors. On Broadway: Metamorphosis (Steven Berkoff) . Off-Broadway: Beckett Shorts (JoAnne Akalaitis). National and international tours: Forbidden Christmas, or the Doctor and the Patient (Rezo Gabriadze), In Paris (Dmitry Krymov), Man in a Case (Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar), Brodsky/Baryshnikov (Alvis Hermanis), The White Helicopter (Alvis Hermanis), The Old Woman (Robert Wilson), Letter to A Man (Robert Wilson). Current film installation NOT ONCE. (Jan Fabre). Baryshnikov is an Academy Award and Tony Award nominee and Emmy Award recipient, the Kennedy Center Honors, and the National Medal of Arts. He was Artistic Director of American Ballet Theater (1980-89) and co-founder and dancer of White Oak Dance Project (1989-2000). He is the founder and artistic director of Baryshnikov Arts Center.
Juliet Brett,
Anya
Brett (she/her) was most recently seen in the feature film Deep Water (starring Ben Affleck & Ana de Armas). She heavily recurred on the FX series Fosse/Verdon as Nicole Fosse alongside Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams. On stage, Juliet made her debut in Beth Henley's The Jacksonian at The New Group alongside Ed Harris, Bill Pullman, and Amy Madigan. Other theater includes: Napoli, Brooklyn (Roundabout), What I Did Last Summer (Signature), Desire (59e59), Mr. Wolf (Rajiv Joseph, w.p at Cleveland Playhouse). Additional Select Film/TV: The Walking Dead, Red Oaks (Amazon), Noah Baumbachs' Mistress American, J.C Chandors' A Most Violent Year, CSI: New York, Law & Order: SVU. Socials: @julietbrett
Darya Denisova, Charlotta
Denisova is a Boston based actor known for her work with SpeakEasy Stage Company, Actors' Shakespeare Project and Arlekin Players, and has been recognized by The New York Times (critic's pick) and leading Boston critics for her roles at Arlekin Players. Recipient: 2020 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Actress for Arlekin’s The Stone. Select Lead Roles: Memorial Prayer, Natasha’s Dream, Tales of the Last Wednesday, Dead Man’s Diary, МЫ-US, The Stone, The Seagull and State VS Natasha Banina (all Arlekin Players productions). Select National/ International theatre: United SOLO festival (New York); SOLO Festival (Moscow, Russia); and HighFest Theatre Festival (Yerevan, Armenia) with her award-winning solo performance Natasha’s Dream. She studied acting at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts in Moscow. She has taught documentary theatre at the Startalk School at Harvard University and the Stanislavsky method at the Igor Golyak acting studio.
Seth Gore,
as Trofimov
Gore is a Deaf bilingual creative house. Specializing in interplay between English and ASL languages, arts, teaching and technology, Seth allows his deafness to permeate and influence his work. His work is centered around signed language and effective and authentic human communications. As Director of ASL and ASL Coach for several Hollywood and Broadway productions, including Paramount’s A Quiet Place 2, Freestyle Love Supreme and To Kill a Mockingbird in MSG, Seth ensures the signed message gets through to the audience. He lives in New York City and currently is developing signed script collaboration solutions (Visual Script) and English grammar learning (Grammar Shapes) and teaching workshops (Unlearning Words) that aim to unlock people’s signed thought and make their communications more whole.
Elise Kibler,
Varya
Kibler has appeared Off-Broadway in Is Edward Snowden Single? (The Pool Plays), All the Natalie Portmans (MTC), Mies Julie (Classic Stage Company), Napoli, Brooklyn (Roundabout Theatre Company), Indian Summer (Playwrights Horizons), London Wall (Mint Theater). She has also been seen on Broadway in The Heidi Chronicles and This is Our Youth. She trained at NYU Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & TV. Elise is also a writer and filmmaker.
Nael Nacer, Lopakhin
Nael Nacer made his New York debut in The Orchard Off-Broadway in 2022.. Regional credits include: Our Town (dir. David Cromer), Romeo and Juliet, A Doll’s House, Bedroom Farce (dir. Maria Aitken), Awake and Sing! (Huntington Theatre); The Merchant of Venice (dir. Igor Golyak), Macbeth (Actors' Shakespeare Project); People, Places & Things, Small Mouth Sounds, Tribes (SpeakEasy Stage); The Tempest (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company); The Seagull (dir. Igor Golyak), ChekhovOS (Arlekin Players); The Return (Israeli Stage), Tiny Beautiful Things, True West, The Flick (Gloucester Stage); Constellations (Central Square Theatre); Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, Intimate Apparel (Lyric Stage), A Number, Lungs, The Kite Runner (New Repertory Theatre); The Aliens, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Company One).
Jeff Hayenga,
Gaev
Jeff Hayenga — New York: The Lehman Trilogy, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Junk, The Elephant Man, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Harvey, The Importance of Being Earnest, Jeffrey, Two Rooms, Patient A, Book
of Wren, Fire on Babylon, Hamlet, Hapgood, As Bees In Honey Drown, Film and TV: Bones, Blacklist, Law and Order(s), Star Trek NG and Enterprise, Center Stage, Other People’s Money, The Prince of Pennsylvania, Memron, The Unborn, And The Band Played On. Regional Favorites: Salome (DC Shakespeare) Circle Mirror
Transformation (Actors Theatre Louisville) The Winslow Boy and Nonsense and Beauty (St Louis Rep) Dream of the Burning Boy (Malibu Playhouse) Pride’s Crossing (Old Globe) The Life and Adventures of
Nicholas Nickleby (Missouri Rep) Love! Valour! Compassion! (Intiman & Berkeley Rep) Good Boys (ACT) National Tours: Twelve Angry Men,
Gene Ravvin,
Passerby
Gene Ravvin is a founding member of Arlekin Players Theatre where highlights include Dead Man’s Diary, The Bear, The Ghost, Memorial Prayer, Warsaw Melody, and The Adventures of Edward Tulane, among others. He was recently in the film About Faith, and his numerous television appearances include Limitless, The Americans, Madame Secretary, and Brotherhood. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and the Moscow Art Theater School, Cambridge.