PacRep’s Community Voices program debuts with the unique 'Chekhov Or Not.'

Dr. Kheal by Cuban-American playwright Irene Fornés (1930-2018) and Swan Song by Ukrainian-Russian playwright Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) have nothing – and everything – in common.

Both are one-act, minimalistic plays. Both are dominated by one male character. But they come from different centuries, different cultures and are of different temperaments.

An avant garde absurd comedy from 1968, Dr. Kheal contains itself within a form of a lecture given by a professor, the archetypal genius madman, about all things in life, combining metaphysical babble, obsessions and chillingly significant observations on the human condition. Swan Song, from 1887, is a story of an old actor, Vasili Svietlovidoff, who falls asleep in a dressing room and awakens alone in a Russia that already smells of a revolution. It’s heavier in tone and message than Dr. Kheal.

For reasons unknown even to himself, Paul Barber, the show’s co-producer and main actor, had the two plays associated with each other in his head since his college days. A lifelong actor, writer and producer, Barber moved to Carmel circa 2016.

“I was walking and I saw [PacRep performing at] the Forest Theater, and it was like seeing a cathedral to me, an ancient, profound thing,” he says. “I wanted in.”

Chekhov Or Not seemed a perfect fit for Community Voices, a new series launched by Pacific Repertory Theatre to elevate and empower the creative work of locals. “The company is providing the lights and the space,” says PacRep’s John Newkirk, who serves as the director for Barber’s project, which will be produced on PacRep’s Circle Theatre stage. “The people who come in take responsibility for every other aspect.”

Chekhov Or Not is a mash-up of two back-to-back one-acts; Barber will play both main characters. “They look very different and sound very different,” he says about the roles. “Dr. Kheal is profound but also silly. Svietlovidoff is… a very lonely man who then finds somebody to love him and take care of him.”

Howard Burnham plays that somebody, Nikitushka Ivanitch. “He is a very simple soul,” Burnham says about Ivanitch. “He is an illiterate peasant, but he has all Shakespeare’s memorized.”

Chekhov Or Not. 7:30pm Mondays-Wednesdays; 2pm Saturdays, Dec. 1-11. Circle Theatre at Golden Bough Playhouse, Casanova Street between 8th and 9th, Carmel. $36; $31/ seniors; $21/students, teachers, military. (831) 622-0100, pacrep.org.