My wife and I went to the Paramount Theater in Boston last night to see The Orchard, a variation of Anton Chekhov’s play, The Cherry Orchard, starring Jessica Hecht and Mikhail Baryshnikov. It was a very avant-garde play. It used a robotic arm that was its own character, a Boston Dynamics robotic dog, and a projection screen curtain draped in front of the whole stage.

The projection screen was artfully and cinematically used during various scenes to strengthen the presentation of their characters inner emotional state. It also provided atmosphere (through, for example, projecting cherry blossoms blowing in the wind), and acted as an announcer for each act of the play.

The one real disappointment was that the actors didn’t project their voices and enunciate their words well enough, so I found the dialogue difficult to discern through much of the play. I suspect the hope was their microphones and the speakers would be enough to pick up and amplify their voices.