THE DRAGON at Pushkin Hall – New York, NY

Theater 86 is thrilled to return this fall season with Evgeny Schwartz’s The Dragon—a blistering political fable disguised as a fairy tale. Written in 1943 under Stalin’s regime, the play tells the story of a town that has lived under the rule of a three-headed dragon for centuries. When a wandering knight arrives to slay the monster, he discovers that the greatest obstacle is not the dragon itself but the townspeople who have grown obedient, complicit, and even grateful for their oppression.

Because of its thinly veiled critique of dictatorship, censorship, and the machinery of authoritarian control, The Dragon was swiftly banned in the Soviet Union and remained unperformed for decades. Only in 1962, during the Khrushchev Thaw, did the play finally reach the stage—though even then it faced renewed censorship whenever its satire cut too close to current politics.

Today, the play feels uncannily fresh. The Dragon skewers the mechanisms of obedience, the spread of misinformation, the silencing of opposition, and the corruption of those in power. It asks: what happens when a society becomes so accustomed to tyranny that it resists liberation itself?

Darkly funny, biting, and eerily timely, Schwartz’s satire reminds us that the struggle against dictatorship is never just about removing a leader—it is about confronting fear, complicity, and the human tendency to trade freedom for security.

Directed by Aleksey Burago

Translated by Di Zhu

Cast: Hazen Cuyler, Michael Donaldson, James Hallett, Ariel Polanco, Sarah O’Donnell, Mark K. Simmons, Tom Schubert, and Di Zhu