Heart of a Dog

Transcending “man bites dog,” man is dog in Bulgakov’s classic novella Heart of a Dog, the story of a dog turned into a man by science, with less than stellar results. Adapted for the stage and directed by Michael Franco, this stage version had its world premiere at the Bulgakov International Festival in Kiev , Ukraine in September of 2002. In a classic clash of ideology and morality, representatives of two cultures struggle to find their place in Stalin’s new Russia; the post-revolutionary worker thrown into the unfamiliar role of governing, and the pre-revolutionary professor trying to hold onto his old world while attempting to make sense of the new one. Heart of a Dog was the first of Bulgakov’s works to be seized and banned for its scathing social satire. It was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987.

When an elegant, upper-crust professor rescues a stray dog, the dog thinks he’s been given a golden new life–until the professor implants parts of a criminal into him. As he slowly begins to turn into a man (and a truly abominable man at that), the professor is horrified to discover that his creation gets along very well with the proletariat committee attempting to force him to share his luxurious apartment. He begins to consider ways to reverse the procedure…

Presented by Elephant StageWorks.