(Not to be confused with Star Trek’s Pavel Chekov, who spells his name with a plain “k” instead of a “kh”. Of course, since this is all transliteration from Cyrillic, of which there are multiple systems, arguing about spelling is rather dubious anyway.) The guerilla performance group Improv Everywhere stages events in public places and carefully records the reaction of their unwitting “audience”. Perhaps one of their best-known stunts is the appearance of author Anton Chekhov at a New York City Barnes and Noble.

After the reading, they set up a table in Union Square Park across the street and sold autographed copies of The Cherry Orchard from a table.

The young man in the jean jacket above insisted that Chekov only sign his autograph, rather than making it out to anyone in particular. He proudly announced, “When you die, this is going to be worth lots of money!”

Though I think their best performance from an artistic performance point of view was The Moebius.