HEART OF A DOG to Inaugurate Theater 86's New Midtown Home

Theater 86 will open its new permanent home at 315 West 39th Street in Midtown Manhattan, marking a major new chapter for the company after losing its longtime performance space at West-Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street.

The new theater gives Theater 86 a permanent stage of its own once again after a period of producing work across New York City without a dedicated home. The company has rebuilt the space and will officially welcome audiences beginning November 5.

The move to Midtown continues a more than two-decade history for Theater 86 in New York City. Founded in 2004, the company spent years at Pushkin Hall on West 86th Street, where it built an international ensemble of artists and a community around its productions. The company ultimately took its Theater 86 name from the street where that community first took root.

Theater 86 will inaugurate the new space with a stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog, directed by founder and Artistic Director Aleksey Burago. Performances will run November 5 through December 6, with Opening Night followed by a celebration with the cast and creative team.

For the inaugural production, Theater 86 returns to Bulgakov, an author whose work has long been central to the company's artistic history. Written in 1925, Heart of a Dog follows a celebrated Moscow surgeon whose experiment transforms a stray dog into a man, with unexpected consequences. Darkly comic and unsettling, the story explores scientific ambition, social engineering and the limits of attempting to reshape human nature.

Burago has directed more than 60 productions across Europe and the United States. A graduate of the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS), he trained under director Pyotr Fomenko before emigrating to New York.