Our Class, the award-winning play by Polish writer Tadeusz Słobodzianek, will be performed for the first time in New York at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) from January 12–February 4, 2024. The production is adapted by Norman Allen, and directed by Igor Golyak.

Our Class received the 2010 NIKE Literary Prize and has had productions throughout the world since its premiere at the National Theatre in London in 2009. The play follows ten Polish classmates — five Jewish and five Catholic — growing up as playmates, friends and neighbors, who then turn on one another with life and death consequences. Inspired by real life events surrounding a horrific 1941 pogrom in the small village of Jedwabne, the play follows their lives from childhood through eight decades of upheaval.

Igor Golyak was born in Ukraine. He is the founder and artistic director of Arlekin Players Theatre & Zero Gravity (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab. A global leader in virtual theater, he recently directed The Orchard, featuring Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov Off-Broadway and in Boston. He received international acclaim for virtual productions WITNESS, chekhovOS /an experimental game/ and State vs. Natasha Banina, receiving multiple New York Times Critic’s Picks. He received Elliot Norton Awards for The Seagull, The Stone, and Dead Man’s Diary, including Best Director. He also received This Week In New York Pandemic Awards and Broadway World’s Best Director of a Streamed Production Award. Golyak’s Arlekin, a company of immigrants, launched an #Artists4Ukraine Initiative in 2020, and has performed all over the world. Golyak 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).

Arlekin Players Theatre was founded by Artistic Director Igor Golyak in 2009, and launched its (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab in 2020. Arlekin recently produced The Orchard featuring Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and received world-wide acclaim, including two New York Times Critic’s Picks, for their virtual projects during the pandemic, including WITNESS, State vs Natasha Banina and chekhovOS /an experimental game/. Arlekin received multiple Elliot Norton Awards for productions of The Stone and The Seagull. A company of immigrants, Arlekin has toured internationally, and performs works that play on the ideas of cross-culture, home, and traditions, challenging the idea of nationality, and finding common themes that unite. This season, Arlekin is producing multi-media staged readings in partnership with Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings and the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD), presented by Lincoln Center and The Huntington Theatre. Arlekin launched #Artists4Ukraine in 2020 to raise funds for humanitarian aid and stand in solidarity with artists in Ukraine.