Performance and reality refract into a chaos of images and dreams as a working class NYC theatre group subsumes itself in a year-long rehearsal and staging of Chekhov’s 'The Seagull.'

A feature documentary film directed by Meg Case and Brad Porter. Starring Ryan Czerwonko (The Electric State, Chicago Med, The Endgame), Mia Vallet (Hightown, FBI, Blindpsot), and Peter Rinaldi (Back to One Podcast). Produced by Adult Film, an NYC film/theatre group + artistic training center.

Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull". One year. A young theater company takes a risk: can an ensemble of actors train together on an experimental process for one whole year, with no financial incentive or guarantee of success? The answer is almost no! With filmmakers Meg Case and Brad Porter documenting the experience, a Russian Doll unfolds: a play about actors doing a play while making a film about doing a play. Theatre and film collapse into each other as the company searches for the truth about what it takes to survive as a working class artist in NYC. This film examines how we perform our own lives for others, to be watched and captured, and how we stand outside our own existence.

“ADULT FILM appreciates mess, grown-up topics, ambiguity, bad behavior, the dark side...they surround themselves in an atmosphere of creativity and possibility.” — SHEILA O'MALLEY, ROGER EBERT

“Adult Film employs both the stage and the screen in their theater practice, be that having projections running in shows, or the documenting of their process like in their forthcoming feature "Chekhovian," following Adult Film’s 2024 storied and practically reality-bending year-long attempt to realize a newly translated rendition of 'The Seagull'.” — ALEX LEI, BRUISER MAG

“Exactly what we live here for…Enter at your own risk…Just when you start worrying that the homogenization of taste is killing New York theater, a show like this comes around.” — ELISABETH VINCENTELLI, NY TIMES

This project was made possible in part by support from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and with fiscal sponsorship from The Gotham/Filmmaker Magazine.