Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884 - 1937) was a Russian essayist, playwright, novelist and naval engineer. Initially a Bolshevik, he rejected the party when it insisted all art must be “useful to the movement.” Zamyatin’s 1921 novel WE became the Soviet Union’s first banned book; debuting in a U.S. English translation in 1924. The novel uses science-fiction and satire to expose how trends emerging from the 1917 October Revolution were transforming Russia into an oppressive state. As populist authoritarianism expands across the globe, now is the perfect time to present Zamyatin’s novel on stage.

1,000 years in the future, WE takes place in an authoritarian society called The One State, governed by technological efficiency, rationality and an enforced suppression of individual identity. It is the diary of D-503 (One State citizens have numbers, not names), lead engineer of “The Integral”, a spaceship soon to be deployed on a colonial mission, spreading the regime and culture of The One State across the universe.

D-503 is content with his mechanical, rational life. But after he meets I-330, a mysterious woman with transgressive ideas, irrationality pierces his psyche and he experiences dreams for the first time. As their affair progresses, D-503's full range of humanity blossoms and he begins to see himself as an individual rather than a numeric cog in the collective “we”. The story intensifies when I-330 reveals she is a member of an underground rebel group planning to hijack “The Integral” on its inaugural test flight.