The Heart of a Dog

Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic Soviet satire The Heart of a Dog gets an updated adaptation for American audiences by co-creators Andy North and Kurt Hartwig. Conceived in the summer of 2009, North and Hartwig fashioned a two-person variation on Bulgakov’s themes.

The brilliant scientist Doctor Voronov implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a recently deceased and rather bad man into the body of a still-living and very nice dog. The dog transforms into a bad man who hates cats.

While Bulgakov’s satire focused on his contemporary Soviet Union, North and Hartwig incorporate events from U.S. history, keeping the satire but relocating the action in both place and time. The satire is less at the particulars of history than it is at the illusions of the present.

The five characters in this version of the story are all performed by the two writer-performers. Neither North nor Hartwig occupy any one role exclusively, but alternate them throughout the play. They are not merely interchangeable within the show, but between shows. At the beginning of every performance, the audience will have a hand in determining which of the two will begin the play as the dog. Viewers who come more than once may see the entire story performed by the opposite actor that they saw previously.