What are the responsibilities and job description for the The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov at HERE Arts Center, NYC - Seeking Actors position at XYZ Theatricals?
DESCRIPTION
THE BLACK MONK
By Anton Chekhov
Directed and created by Egor Trukhin
SEEKING
Actors with strong physical theater experience for The Black Monk, an ensemble-driven adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s short story. The production combines dramatic acting, physically driven performance, and chorus work to explore ambition, intimacy, and the unstable boundary between genius and destruction.
Union and Non-Union actors are both welcome!
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Exhausted by his work and ambition, the brilliant young intellectual Andrey Kovrin returns to his childhood home, where he reunites with Tanya Pesotskaya and her father, Egor. As Andrey and Tanya fall in love, he begins seeing a mysterious figure who looks exactly like him: the Black Monk.
The Monk tells Andrey that he is one of the chosen few - and that his suffering is inseparable from his genius. Soon, the figure begins to multiply. Andrey’s doubles become companions, collaborators, rivals, and an entire chorus of his consciousness. As they make him feel increasingly free, creative, and certain of his exceptional destiny, Tanya must confront a reality very different from his own.
PERFORMANCE AND TRAINING REQUIREMENTS
Strong physical theater experience is required. Formal training in dramatic acting is strongly preferred.
Physical performance will be a central focus of the rehearsal process. We seek performers with a strong foundation in dramatic acting, ensemble work, movement, and physically driven storytelling.
Please clearly identify your specific physical theater training and professional experience in your submission, including relevant productions, companies, and methodologies. General movement experience alone does not fulfill the physical theater requirement.
CHARACTER BREAKDOWN
ANDREY KOVRIN
Male; playing age early 30s; White.
A brilliant, charismatic intellectual whose intelligence is both his greatest strength and the source of his destruction. Restless, funny, obsessive, and emotionally volatile, Andrey pursues ideas with almost religious intensity. He is drawn to the possibility that his suffering reveals something extraordinary within him.
The role requires intellectual precision, strong comic instincts, and the ability to move rapidly between tenderness, exhilaration, cruelty, terror, and extreme vulnerability. Andrey is the engine of the production.
TANYA PESOTSKAYA
Female; playing age late 20s to early 30s; White.
Andrey’s childhood companion and Egor’s daughter. Intelligent, perceptive, warm, emotionally direct, and sometimes awkward, Tanya is deeply connected to her father and the life they have built together.
The role requires emotional transparency, strength, and humor, with the ability to move from intimacy and joy into fear, frustration, and grief without sentimentality.
EGOR PESOTSKY
Male; playing age 60s–70s; White.
Tanya’s father and the patriarch of the Pesotsky household. Egor has devoted his life to his orchard, and his attachment to it borders on obsession. Energetic, demanding, affectionate, stubborn, and sometimes comic, he moves swiftly between enormous warmth and absolute fixation.
He loves Andrey almost as a son and sees Andrey and Tanya’s relationship as the ideal continuation of his family and life’s work.
Seeking a powerful character actor with warmth, eccentricity, comic instinct, authority, and substantial emotional range.
THE BLACK MONK / ANDREY’S FIRST COPY
Male; playing age early 30s; White.
The first and most significant manifestation of Andrey’s double: a version of Andrey without restraint, fear, or shame. He is freer, more instinctive, and more dangerous than Andrey himself.
Seeking a highly physical actor with a wide emotional range, a willingness to take creative risks, and the ability to make rapid physical and emotional shifts. The body is as important as the text. Strong physical theater experience is essential.
SEVEN ADDITIONAL COPIES OF ANDREY
Male; playing age approximately early 30s; all ethnicities.
As the Black Monk multiplies, these figures surround Andrey as an ensemble, chorus, companions, rivals, collaborators, and fragments of his consciousness.
Each performer must bring a distinct presence while functioning as part of a shared psychological organism. The copies encourage, challenge, imitate, and contradict, Andrey and one another, while competing over the central question: which of them is the real Andrey Kovrin?
Seeking strong ensemble actors with excellent physical awareness, rhythm, comic instincts, and precision, who can shift fluidly between individual expression and collective behavior.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
Please submit the following to Zihe Tian at [email protected]
1) A current headshot and resume.
2) Links to footage of your professional theater work, preferably demonstrating your physical theater and ensemble experience.
3) A one-minute self-tape introducing yourself and briefly describing your acting background and physical theater training.
And please indicate any major scheduling conflicts from December 3rd to February 15th.
DURATION
Dec 3, 2026 - Feb 15, 2027
SALARY
$1,000.00 – $1,500.00 per show
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UNION
Showcase Code - NON-UNION