With some very important theater luminaries lending a hand, Alley Resident Acting Company members are taking on five short Anton Chekhov plays and short stories and bringing them to life in the intimate setting of the Neuhaus Theatre.

On an program titled Little Comedies, Actor Dylan Godwin is in The Wedding about a rural Russian family getting ready for a wedding, "He is a young bridegroom. You kind of get the sense when the play opens that this is a rather provincial Russian family that sort of revels in the fact that they're uneducated in a very honest way. He is the bridegroom and coming into the family and this is the wedding and he's a little pushy.

"Yes, I'm marrying your daughter but let's talk about what's in the dowry."

As for the family's reaction?  "You kind of get the sense that this is a bit of a rushed marriage. The family,  you just kind of get the sense from the beginning of this play that they’re here to get this thing done and maybe they've thrown it together a little quickly. They're there to get her married and move on to the next thing," Godwin said.

The five one acts are Swan Song, The Bear, The Proposal, The Wedding and On The Harmfulness of Tobacco. There will be an intermission between the third and fourth play and Godwin promises all the plays will fly by with fast pacing. Tony-Award winning playwright and legendary director Richard Nelson, working with translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky,  adapted the plays and short stories for this world premiere.

Also working on the play with Nelson. are costume designer Susan Hilferty, sound designer Scott Lehrer and lighting designer Jennifer Tipton. All four, renowned in their fields, will be honored with the Alley Theatre Award for Lifetime Achievement in a fund-raiser and celebration the night of Monday, October 9.

In one way this is a large departure from the usual Alley performance, Godwin says. Nelson wants everyone to perform in the most realistic manner possible — which means no projecting to the back rows, Godwin says. Instead, the theater will be filled with mics, enabling actors to have normal level conversations. Actors will also be facing each other in conversations instead of speaking out to the audience, Godwin said.

"A lot of this work comes from a time of Russian vaudeville. If there's a theme it's humans, men, women, how they interact," Godwin said. "The real focus of this work is portraying an honest slice of life which goes back to the idea of us not being theatrical, not projecting, not doing any of those things you may see in our regular work."

Godwin described working with Nelson as "wonderful."

"Richard is one of the more prolific playwrights living right now and directors and he works everywhere. Right after this he's got a show in Paris that's happening; he's worked extensively in London, all over. He's just the most sort of down to earth, humbly brilliant guy."

Audiences won't be seeing actors in garb from the 1800s but in casual modern day clothes, Godwin said. Instead designer Hilferty working with co-costume designer Camilla Dely, asked them how they usually dressed, what they felt comfortable in, he said.

And yes, just so audiences know, Chekhov, famous for what should happen if there is a gun in a play (“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.”)  doesn't disappoint with a duel in one of the offerings.

"I think this is really going to change the people who come to see it what their perspective on Chekhov is and the way Chekhov is performed," Godwin said. "We certainly have an idea in our minds of what it means to go to an evening of Chekhov and I think that can be a grey sort of morose melancholy experience and that's the opposite of what these plays are."

Performances are scheduled for October 6-29 at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, and 7 p.m. Sundays. Please check with theater since there are varied times. At the Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713.220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $45-$54.