{"id":613,"date":"2023-12-04T18:46:53","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T18:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/28\/?p=613"},"modified":"2024-01-02T16:51:48","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T16:51:48","slug":"first-metis-man-of-odesa-liminalities-ruptures-and-reconnections-of-voice-and-community-in-ukraine-and-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/28\/first-metis-man-of-odesa-liminalities-ruptures-and-reconnections-of-voice-and-community-in-ukraine-and-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em>: Liminalities, Ruptures, and Reconnections of Voice and Community in Ukraine and Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Moira Day<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Based on MacKenzie\u2019s 2021 audioplay, First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/font>, as written and performed by M\u00e9tis-Canadian playwright Matthew MacKenzie and Ukrainian actress, Mariya Khomutova appeals on one level as a bittersweet romantic comedy. Yet in tracing the couple\u2019s real-life transatlantic romance and marriage from the final years of the post-Maidan era (2018-2019), through the COVID upheaval (2020-2021), and most notably, the outbreak of war in Ukraine (2022-), the stage play also functions as a fluid aesthetic exploration of the larger cultural intersections between Ukraine and Canada, Ukrainian-Canadian and M\u00e9tis-Indigenous communities \u2013 past and present. Ultimately, this article argues, the stage play, in production, text and the context of its times, also deepens beyond the love story of the original audioplay into an increasingly complex and often deeply moving personal and artistic journey through the harrowing liminalities of art and life, and of rupture, trauma and voice in a time of war.

Keywords: <\/strong> theatre, Ukrainian, Canadian, M\u00e9tis-Indigenous, Russo-Ukrainian War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liminalities<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

MacKenzie and Khomutova\u2019s First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa <\/em>[FMMO<\/em>23] lists as its setting\u201c That liminal space between coming and going, true love and heartbreak, war and peace <\/em>(TS Title page). Spatially, the play shifts fluidly between contemporary Ukraine and Canada. Chronologically, it unfolds the love story between Edmonton-born M\u00e9tis-Canadian playwright Matthew MacKenzie and Odesa-born Ukrainian actress, Mariya Khomutova over the final post-Maidan years (2018-2019 – romance); the COVID crisis (2020-2021 – marriage); and the full-scale invasion (2022-present – family). As with MacKenzie\u2019s original 30-minute 2021 audioplay [FMMO21], the couple\u2019s story of \u201ctrue love and heartbreak<\/em>\u201d (Title page) remains central to the production\u2019s warm, humorous appeal to audiences across Canada. However, it is in the constant \u201ccoming and going<\/em>\u201d of thought, memory, image, grief, loss and voice around the two great pillars of \u201cwar and peace<\/em>\u201d (Title page) that the real power of the play lies.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Mariya Khomutova as Masha in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Liminalities \u2013 Ukraine and Canada<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In theatre, the past often exists synchronistically with the present on stage; arguably the outbreak of the Ukranian war has similarly ruptured the lines between past and present to radically expand and redefine the liminal spaces of time, place, and synchronicity between Ukraine and Canada. In his June 10 2023 address to the Verkhovna Rada, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reminded Ukrainian legislators of a shared history going back to 1891 and the first wave of Ukrainian immigrants arriving in Canada largely from the older Austro-Hungarian crownlands or western territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Head of State, he may also have been an embodied reminder that initially Ukrainians were recruited as part of an aggressive federal campaign to displace the original Indigenous and M\u00e9tis communities on the Great Plains with \u201csuitable\u201d Eastern European settlers accustomed to farming in harsh, rural conditions. Significantly though, Trudeau also swiftly established an imagistic continuum between prairies past, present and yet to come, as part of a strong ongoing pledge of Canadian support. Because of \u201cthe Canada Ukraine authorization for emergency travel [CUAET] [\u2026] Ukrainian refugee students like Victoria, whose parents are dentists, [will] pay the same tuition as local kids [so she can] afford to study at the University of Saskatchewan. [Since] Ukrainians have helped us  build our country over the past generations […] it is as right as rain that Canadians will be there to rebuild your country for future generations\u201d (Trudeau 12.49).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Volodymyr Zelensky asked Canadians to imaginatively enter a similar liminal time and space between countries when he addressed the Canadian Parliament on March 15, 2022:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Imagine that at 4 a.m., each of you start hearing bomb explosions.[…] You, your children hear all these severe explosions: bombing of airport, bombing of Ottawa airport, tens of other cities of your wonderful country. Can you imagine that?<\/p>\nConnelly<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He ends with a direct appeal to the 1,359,655 people of full or partial Ukrainian origin – not only Canada\u2019s eleventh largest ethnic group overall but the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world outside of Russia (\u201cUkrainian Canadians\u201d): \u201cI would like also to ask our Ukrainian diaspora in Canada\u201d in this \u201chistorical moment\u201d to show with your \u201cpractical support […] your practical steps […] that you are part of the modern Ukrainian history\u201d (Connelly).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond referencing the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada as a historical point of intersection, Zelensky and Trudeau transform it into a liminal space of ongoing nation-building between two post-colonial countries growing to autonomy under the shadow of powerful neighbours. In December 1991, the centennial of the first Canadian-Ukrainian arrivals, Canada and Poland became the first nations to recognize Ukraine as an independent country. The invasion has catalyzed both Canada and its diaspora into a living alliance against Russian aggression on multiple human, cultural, and socio-political fronts. As of May 31, 2023, Canada was the sixth highest supplier of bilateral aid to Ukraine, after the United States, EU institutions, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan (\u201cTotal\u201d). As of September 30, 2023, 185,753 Ukrainians had arrived in Canada under CUAET (Government of Canada), surpassing in just over eighteen months the 170, 000 that arrived between 1891 and 1914, and the post-Soviet boom of 126,000 between 1991 and 2012 (\u201cUkrainian Canadians\u201d; Umansky).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The preservation and continued practice of the arts, including the performing arts, has been important to the survival of the prairie Ukranian diaspora as a distinct ethnic community. Nonetheless, neither that diaspora nor its artistic, lingual or cultural practice has remained frozen in time. Jen Budney, the curator of the Ukrainian Museum of Canada (Saskatoon), suggests that older artifacts demonstrate a hybridization of Cree and Ukrainian patterns, designs, and colours that hint at other levels of embodied cultural and artistic interconnection yet to be synthesized into the increasingly complex narrative of being Ukrainian in Canada (14.04).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FMMO23<\/em> references a specific chronological point in time and place, while simultaneously functioning in production as a fluid, dynamic liminal space where language, colours, patterns, and human communities – Ukraine and Canada, Ukrainian-Canadian and M\u00e9tis-Indigenous – meet to explore multiple human levels of rupture, change, adaptation, and reconnection. It is also an embodied knowledge that becomes further intensified by the playwrights taking the stage as their dramatic avatars, Matt and Masha, to move the original 2021 love story into an increasingly complex personal and artistic odyssey through the harrowing issues of art and life, and of rupture, trauma and voice in a time of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life and Art: A Debate<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n
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Mariya Khomutova as Masha and Matthew MacKenzie as Matt in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The first third of the play functions largely as a sprightly debate on the interface between life and art. Matt, the champion of \u201cverbatim theatre,\u201d a form of documentary theatre that is based on, and sometimes uses only, the spoken words of real people, quickly raises his banner as \u201cMatthew MacKenzie […] Artistic Director of Punctuate! Theatre. I\u2019m not an actor, but in this play\u2014a true story, I perform the role of myself, Matt MacKenzie\u201d(3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As framed by a stylized proscenium arch with rich velvet stage curtains, Masha, champion of the classics as a higher, enduring voice of human \u201ctruth\u201d in an often brutal, flawed world, allows her formidable stage presence to speak for itself amidst a neo-classical set equally eloquent in its silence: a Greek pillar evocative of the supporting backcolumns of a traditional European-style playhouse, bisects the backstage in half, and is further flanked by two matching panels of simple neo-classical symmetry. Even when visually muted from the forestage action by a scrim, the backdrop remains a constant ghostly presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Round One takes place in Kyiv on October 21st<\/sup>, 2018. Masha enters the action as \u201c\u2018Yelena\u2019 from Lianna Makuch\u2019s \u2018Barvinok\u2019\u201d<\/em> (3) the play that MacKenzie, in conjunction with Punctuate!Theatre\/Pyretic Productions, was workshopping with the help of Ukrainian actors. Matt, having just returned with his Canadian colleagues from doing research interviews at the frontline in Eastern Ukraine, clearly feels sure of his ground. Makuch (also the director of FMMO23<\/em>) herself characterized as \u201cverbatim theatre\u201d the first half of Barvinok<\/em> dealing with her own attempt as Hania to cope with her immigrant grandmother\u2019s growing dementia and resurgent PTSD from World War II as retriggered by the 2014 war in Donbas, and the ominous silence of relatives in Eastern Ukraine (Nicholls). Makuch concedes that the second half of the play, featuring Hania\u2019s visit to the war zone to locate lost family, featured more dramatized characters, including Ukrainian soldier-guides, Pavlo and Misha, and Yelena a young mother living in a hostel with her daughter. Nonetheless, even those characters were based closely on recorded interviews with some fifty \u201cinternally displaced persons, government officials, soldiers and many others\u201d directly affected by the conflict (Levytsky).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Matt, as company co-founder and production dramaturge, assumes this wealth of documentary \u201creality\u201d should settle all interpretative questions, he is in for a rude shock. Masha swiftly challenges Matt to clarify the meaning behind her character\u2019s line, \u201cI need an apartment. Can you give me an apartment?\u201d (3) Matt, seemingly flustered, says that he felt that the character was issuing an appeal to the West, \u201cto the Canadian public at large\u201d (4) to remember and help them in their forgotten conflict. Masha first counters \u201cI don\u2019t believe that\u2019s what she meant,\u201d then accommodatingly alters the words to reflect what Matt seems<\/em> to suggest they meant (4). \u201cI don\u2019t want your donations. I want an apartment, in the West\u201d (4). Matt, in both instances, protests that the words<\/em>, as consciously and deliberately spoken by the original subject can be verified by listening to the actual tape. Further, it is important for the actress as the character to deliver those words verbatim <\/em>because presumably the actual words \u201cnothing more, nothing less\u201d (4) can be trusted to contain and convey the meaning of the real life woman directly and accurately. However, Masha ends the argument with the formidable riposte \u201cIn Canada, you have subtext? […]It sounds like she\u2019s saying, \u2018I don\u2019t want to answer your questions\u2014 Canada, fuck off\u2019<\/em>\u201d(4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Matt concludes ruefully, never argue subtext with an actress who had studied \u201cthe Stanislavsky Acting Method with a Master, who studied with a Master, who studied with Stanislavsky himself\u201d (5).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Matthew MacKenzie as Matt and Mariya Khomutova as Masha in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In their next sortie, though, Masha questions the human\/artistic authenticity of verbatim theatre itself. She remains doubtful that \u201cwriting a play based on the real words of real people can be art\u201d at least in part because \u201cit\u2019s not \u2018real\u2019, the moment you put a person\u2019s real words into an actor\u2019s mouth\u201d (7). The woman speaking on the tape, in real life may have been using her words to suggest she did not want to engage further with the Canadian interviewer, but once the woman is transformed into a character in a playscript and interpreted onstage by an actress, the same words spoken in real life may be manipulated, in live performance, into an appeal to a Canadian audience that may have more to do with the playwright\u2019s (or the actor\u2019s) purposes than the woman\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matt counters that theatre is surely at its most authentic when it is \u201ctrying to make sense of what is happening in the world […] in the here and now,\u201d(8) and any literal loss of reality involved in transposing words from life to theatre can be compensated for \u201cby the potential power to communicate a deeper truth through performance\u201d(7). Masha contends that that is why combining the deeper truth of performance with the words of the \u201cgreat writers [who] search for the truth […] of the soul\u201d \u2013 for instance, a \u201cMaster\u201d like Chekhov is so important to her as an actor (8). The argument ends in a truce: if \u201cwriting,[…] searching, […] is a necessary thing\u201d for Matt and \u201cthe classics […] are a necessary thing\u201d for Masha surely it is possible to simply acknowledge that \u201cWe both have needs\u201d (8). The opening argument does raise, however, an important question that the play returns to as a leit motif<\/em>: are words, whether written or uttered live, ever<\/em> \u201cnothing more, nothing less\u201d than what they seem to be \u2013 especially in a time of war?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masha\u2019s critical response to the Toronto theatre scene during her 2019 visit provides a lighter interlude, but their aesthetic debate assumes a darker, more urgent edge during Matt\u2019s next visit to Ukraine in early 2020 to conduct further interviews with women veterans as part of a second project with Makuch: Alina, <\/em>a companion piece to Barvinok<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Mariya Khomutova as Masha and Matthew MacKenzie as Matt in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Alarmed by the veterans\u2019 repeated warnings \u201cthat it is only a matter of time before Russia launches a full-scale invasion\u201d (14) Matt challenges Masha to consider the extent to which her beloved \u201chigh culture\u201d is complicit in the pervasive political, economic, and cultural realities that have created it. Canada and Ukraine are similar, he suggests, in being neo-colonial countries struggling to assert their own distinctive theatrical voices in the face of an older still-pervasive imperial tradition that canonizes Shakespeare in one instance, and Chekhov in another. In Canada, he suggests, the dominance of the British tradition in the form of heavily-funded institutions like Stratford has left most Canadians unable to name even one Canadian playwright. (Ironically, the one that many Canadians could<\/em> name, would be Ukrainian-Canadian, George Ryga, whose milestone 1967 play, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, <\/em>highlighted Canada\u2019s shocking treatment of its Indigenous peoples.) When \u201cit\u2019s well-documented how the British and the Russians have used their cultural canon as a colonial weapon,\u201d how can it be okay after \u201cswallowing Crimea […] for the Kremlin to be funding Russian language theatres in Ukraine?\u201d (14)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both the May 7th<\/sup> roundtable in Edmonton and the June 8th<\/sup> 2023 interview, MacKenzie – who self-identifies as M\u00e9tis of Cree and Ojibway heritage both within and outside of the play – confirmed that he was indeed using \u201csubtext\u201d himself, both as an actor and a well-known M\u00e9tis playwright\/cultural activist, to draw more nuanced parallels between the Ukrainian struggle to use art to reclaim and reassert cultural identity in the face of Russian imperialism, and what he saw as the ongoing struggle of ethnic and racial minorities \u2013 including Ukrainian Canadian and Indigenous ones – to find their own voices in a national cultural landscape still heavily invested in funding one \u201curgent adaptation\u201d (TS 8) of Chekhov and Shakespeare after another. Coming from a community itself long subjected to cultural genocide and sometimes worse, Matt is quicker to perceive the 2014 invasions as a significant geopolitical rupture that cannot be ignored on any<\/em> level. In short, there are multiple verbal and embodied levels to Matt\u2019s protest that it is not possible to discuss \u201cculture\u201d separately from<\/em> war and politics, and that instead, they should be \u201ctalking about the suppression and erasure of culture\u201d through<\/em> war and politics (14).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Masha remains exasperated with what she views as Matt\u2019s over-politicization of art. As Khomutova explained at the May 7th<\/sup> roundtable, her pre-invasion self, actually did not<\/em> view supporting both Russian and Ukrainian art as contradictory. As a bilingual artist, \u201cstudying both Ukrainian and Russian literature,\u201d meant developing a deep love for the beauty and authenticity of Ukrainian culture on its own terms, while also becoming increasingly cognizant of the ways in which \u201ctheatre practice in Ukrainian theatre and Russian theatre was very different,\u201d and where the methodology that Ukrainians use to \u201capproach acting is different from Russian\u201d (11.42).<\/s><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the decade after graduating from her more classically-oriented theatre training at the Kyiv National Theatre University (2012), she had certainly become more aware of the cultural\/political ramifications of channeling disproportionate amounts of public funding, including subsidization from Russia, into large Russian-speaking theatres and theatre schools, \u201chuge machines that were hard to change\u201d (Interview). However, in a large culturally-rich centre like Kyiv, it was still possible to experience the war largely as a catalyst for the huge post-2014 \u201cwave of readings, of Ukrainian plays,\u201d of laboratories developing new plays in new stage languages, and the explosion of Ukrainian cinema \u201cin Ukrainian, but also in Russian\u201d (Interview).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to Matt\u2019s implication that \u201chigh art\u201d is, at best, a diversion from war and politics, and at worst, something more cynical and manipulative, Masha\u2019s assertion that \u201cUkraine is full of culture\u201d (14) resounds as a vindication of those structures where the higher possibilities of beauty, symmetry, transcendence \u2013 and love – can prevail in a real world disintegrating into violence and disorder. Art at its best does not simply duplicate the reality of life onstage, but remains a liminal space where divergent realities can meet, collide, clash, dialogue, and even reconcile in ways they cannot in real life.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Mariya Khomutova as Masha and Matthew MacKenzie as Matt in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At least temporarily, Masha\u2019s \u201cculture and matters of the heart\u201d trump \u201cwar or politics\u201d (14), and the next third of the play, like the 2021 original, unfolds largely as \u201ca captivating romantic comedy set against the backdrop of a global pandemic\u201d (MacKenzie, FMMO2021 0.01). During his visit to Odesa the neo-classical backdrop becomes \u201cthe Odesa Opera theatre, where my [Masha\u2019s] Grandpa\u2019s soul still lives. He used to go every week, for forty years, even when Odesa was occupied during the Second World War\u201d (TS 16).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theatre retains its power as a site of intercultural transcendence when Soviet-Armenian masterpiece \u201cKhachaturian\u2019s Waltz\u201d (1941)\u201c plays to open the show\u2014the very same waltz\u201d Matt had danced to with Nevy his dog,\u201cin anticipation of being reunited with Masha\u201d (16). The evening closes with Masha quoting a haunting passage of poetry by another twentieth-century Soviet artist, Marina Tsvetaeva (d.1941), while they dance in the moonlight to the music of Canadian singer\/musician Celine Dion played by an old man with an accordion (16).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, Matt adds his own \u201cvoice\u201d to the growing cross-cultural, transatlantic symphony of poetry, music and song that provides a \u201cnest\u201d for their improbable cross-Atlantic romance. He beseeches Masha as a \u201cRed Sparrow\u201d to fly to him, passing through \u201cthe Carpathians, where you will meet a Tomtit\u2014who with, custom dictates, you must dance a Hopak\u201d then over the Atlantic to the Canadian prairies until you reach Lake Win Nipee [Winnipeg], where you will meet a Chickadee, who with, custom dictates, you must dance a M\u00e9tis jig\u201d (18); and then on to amiskwac\u00eew\u00e2skahikan <\/em>[Edmonton] where they will reunite (18). Their mutual decision that \u201cThis is real\u201d (17) is sealed by the discovery that Masha is expecting: they will wed in Ukraine, then start their family in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Matthew MacKenzie as Matt and Mariya Khomutova as Masha in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The main antagonist of the audioplay (broadcast April 2021) is COVID especially as it aggravates the \u201crupture\u201d of Masha\u2019s immigration experience, and her personal and creative isolation. Nonetheless, it ends brightly with the birth of Ivan shortly after Masha wins a major Ukrainian film acting award; the stage play extends the denouement by showing the little family preparing for a post-pandemic future that includes travels to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rupture<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n
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Matthew MacKenzie as Matt and Mariya Khomutova as Masha in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On March 1st<\/sup>, 2023, a Ukrainian student attending a memorial event in Edmonton spoke of her own experience of February 24th<\/sup>, 2022: when she heard the first shells drop on Kyiv, her first response was to roll over and try to go back to sleep, pretending it was just thunder. She needed \u2013 even for just a few minutes longer – to hold on to the self, the life, and all the carefully-laid out plans that had been her \u201cnormal\u201d when she went to sleep. Because she knew that as soon as she woke up it was all going to be gone (\u201cFree\u201d). Similarly, on June 03, 2023, Zelensky suggested that the same shells meant the self who had lived his life in five-year plans was also gone: \u201cIt is so difficult for me to believe what will be after<\/em>. The same difficulty in understanding \u2013 or to believe that something was before<\/em>. I\u2019m just in this<\/em> period of time. And I\u2019m a person of this<\/em> period in time\u201d (Interview 1.15.26).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Masha and Matt as well, February 24th<\/sup> is the day that the \u201cnormal\u201d ends – and time, space, self, life and certainty profoundly rupture. As Masha says, \u201cEveryone I have known have had their lives torn. \u2018Before\u2019 and \u2018after\u2019 \u201d(TS 36). Visually, that sense of traumatic fracture is most powerfully evoked by the sudden projection of roiling dark stormclouds across the set, and the fracturing of the neo-classical theatre backdrop. The proscenium stage curtain snaps and drops to the stage, the side panels snap out of alignment, and over the subsequent action, the Greek pillar is also displaced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the ruined set evokes any classical play wracked by Matt\u2019s war and politics, it is older than either Shakespeare or Chekhov. Dr. Sasha Dovzhyk, a London-centered Ukrainian scholar, suggests that many Ukrainians, like herself, who viewed the 2014 invasion as a harbinger of war, often felt like \u201cCassandra\u201d in the Trojan Women<\/em>. Liz Nicholls\u2019s review of a 2022 Edmonton production of Barvinok<\/em> found the play\u2019s \u201cvoice\u201d similarly haunting and prescient given recent \u201c[w]orld events, and a horrifying escalating brutality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The change also conveys a deeper fracturing of Masha\u2019s faith in the art theatre. During Matt\u2019s 2020 visit, the Odesa Opera Theatre had seemed an enduring symbol of the power of culture to speak across time and crisis to multiple generations. Again, in 2022, as in 1941, citizens shutter and sandbag it for protection (32). However, Andrew Kushnir suggests the theatre foremost in the minds of many Ukrainians is the Drama Theatre in Mariupol that is \u201cnow encased in construction fencing put up by the Russian occupiers.\u201d Not only does the barrier obscure \u201cthe demolition of a theatre which, according to Ukrainian authorities, contains the bodies of at least three hundred [including][…] theatre people who took refuge at their former place of work and play,\u201d but \u201cthe Russians have covered it in massive banners depicting Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Gogol.\u201d He clarifies, \u201cI will articulate in no uncertain terms: I don\u2019t want us to cancel Russian culture.[…] it would amount to cancelling deep parts of ourselves and our artform.\u201d Nonetheless, even if Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Chekhov \u201caren\u2019t around to endorse the genocide,\u201d it has to be recognized how they are being weaponized in the \u201cNow\u201d to justify the systematic silencing and \u201cdisappearing\u201d of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than that, Dovzhyk suggests, if she first became aware in 2014 of the extent to which not just the literature but the language itself had become weaponized to justify aggression, it took the 2022 invasion to turn the language \u201cto ashes in people\u2019s mouths\u201d (31.44 ). If the 2014 invasion paradoxically inspired an upsurge of Ukrainian literature, culture, and language as an act of resistance against overt and covert forms of colonial assimilation and oppression, the \u201ccorrective\u201d intervention of 2022 aimed not only at violently suppressing that resistance in older and current generations but eradicating its transmission to the next. In discussing its rationale for condemning the forced deportation of children to Russian territories as a crime against humanity as defined by United Nations legislation, the OSCE noted: \u201cThe Mission was unable to establish a single instance when even an element of the Ukrainian culture would have been allowed by the Russian authorities\u201d (64).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post-invasion, Masha finds that much of \u201chigh culture\u201d has turned to ashes in her mouth as well:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MASHA: <\/strong>What can I create in this state of mind? Should I still be an artist? What for? Who needs this poetry, anymore?
After all those centuries with \u201cRussian high culture\u201d… did it save anyone? Was this \u201chigh culture\u201d so \u201chigh\u201d that it did it not recognize the evil that had taken hold of its core? Or was it not concerned with politics, like me, before the war?
I was so cultural…<\/p>\n42<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to the clear hierarchies, ordered structures, and coherent narratives of \u201cbefore,\u201d self, identity and time have shattered, radically changing the meaning of both the small everyday rituals that ensure continuity, and the large, explosive changes that threaten life itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelensky, himself a former actor, has alternated between describing Feb 24th<\/sup>, 2022 as the beginning of a long day that never ends (Zelenskyy Address) and comparing life in war-time Ukraine to the perpetual time loop in the film Groundhog Day<\/em> where the Bill Murray character is stuck in a constant present, re-living the same day over and over again (Applebaum and Goldberg; \u201cZelensky Compares\u201d) – with one difference: in a world where you cannot rely on living from one minute to the next, let alone one day to the next: \u201cwhen I [Zelensky] wake up, I\u2019m already happy that I was able to wake up\u201d (\u201cMy Next\u201d 13.26).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Matt, the surreal juxtaposition of the trivial and the life-shattering is contained in the last text from friends killed defending Hostomel airport: \u201cDrank coffee. Brushed teeth. Waiting for tanks\u201d (32). For Masha, it is in the story of a close friend who undertakes a desperate search-and-rescue mission to occupied Mariupol only to find her mother sitting quietly in her kitchen drinking tea in the midst of the chaos, bombing and destruction (35-36). \u201cLike millions of Ukrainians,\u201d whose lives had been \u201cnormal two weeks before\u201d (33) Masha\u2019s mother, Olga, finds herself sleeping on a yoga mat on a Bucharest airport floor; a routine flight delay in Warsaw leaves her terrified that Putin is also invading Poland and trying to seize the airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the family, the endless time loop takes on another form. The earlier \u201cromantic comedy\u201d did not include the grueling daily routine around a chronically unsettled baby whose initial miraculous birth cry has turned into a constant sleepless wail. Nor did it include a live-in parent, whose constant chatter, anxiety, obsession with detail, and fierce attention to Soviet child-rearing routines are at least partially a response to her own grief, loss, and sense of displacement. <\/s><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masha earlier cautions that as \u201cdreamers\u201d with \u201crich inner worlds,\u201d they have to emerge \u201cevery once and a while,\u201d or they start confusing \u201cwhat is and isn\u2019t real\u201d (21-22). Instead, the trauma of \u201ccoping\u201d drives both of them increasingly into their own worlds. For Matt, that means retreating into the workshop of his mind to write obsessively into the night. Masha appears to be disappearing into a more dangerous liminal zone akin to the one Zelensky invited his audience to briefly enter on March 15, 2022: a place where it is possible to simultaneously imagine bombs dropping on Kharkiv and Mariupol, and hearing \u201cwith your children […] all these severe explosions\u201d in your own Canadian city (Connelly). But the problem with living in a war zone day after day, Pavlo tells Hania in Barvinok,<\/em> is that the self you become to survive in that perpetual \u201cnow\u201d becomes less and less able to return to the \u201cnormal\u201d and the self and life you had there (1.41.20). A concerned Matt comments, \u201cIt\u2019s agonizing to watch her disappear inside herself. Trapped in this in-between place, she\u2019s not here, but she\u2019s not there\u201d (42). The constant messaging with those left behind, and those who have also fled, combines with her compulsive streaming of horrifying news and images to spark nightmares where she finds herself and Ivan trapped in Bucha: \u201cI write the address of my Aunt in Russia on Ivan\u2019s back. If they kill me, maybe they will at least show my baby mercy\u201d (38).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Matthew MacKenzie as Matt and Mariya Khomutova as Masha in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In a scene that loops back to the initial scene and aesthetic debate, Masha, post-nightmare, echoes a line that eerily echoes Yelena\u2019s: \u201cI just want to do something, that\u2019s helpful. But not donations. They don\u2019t need donations, they need their homes, they need to be safe!\u201d(38). Matt\u2019s response in the \u201cafter\u201d is also surprisingly similar to what it was in the \u201cbefore.\u201d They can help by writing a play. Continuing \u201cfrom where we ended the radio play,\u201d the story could focus on her experiencing of \u201cthe war through other people\u2019s stories\u201d and writing out all \u201cthe pain, the anger, the sorrow that you\u2019re hearing about\u201d(38).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Matt badly miscalculates is how much Masha\u2019s view of life and art have altered. Even in 2018, she questions whether Matt really understands the complexity and mediated nature of the interface between life and art, not just in performance but in writing: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

MASHA: <\/strong>So, if I want to write a play about myself, and the events that truly happened in my life, it will be art?
MATT: <\/strong>If you experience something remarkable enough, or terrible enough, sure.
MASHA: <\/strong>If I truly suffer enough?<\/p>\n8<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She stops short of asking what quota of personal suffering and terrible, remarkable events would be required of her to meet his standards of \u201cart\u201d; nonetheless she implies there are aspects of Matt\u2019s approach to \u201cverbatim theatre\u201d that suggest a problematic blurring of the line between life and art that is potentially as dangerous, manipulative and indulgent as he claims high culture is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unanswered question resurfaces in a bleaker context as Masha begins to suspect that she is dealing with a playwright who is seeking, if not exactly a new Hecuba, at least a new Yelena for his next project. At best, she protests, the result would be \u201can unending monologue about traumatized people\u201d that nobody \u201cwants to hear\u201d (38). At worst, what strikes him as a cathartic experiencing and sharing of the war through other people\u2019s stories, strikes her as the public exploitation of the private pain of her friends and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he proposes that \u201cWe\u2019ll continue\u201d (38) from the radio play, does he mean, perhaps, as an extension of that original \u201ccaptivating romantic comedy\u201d? (FMMO21 0.01). That too belonged to a now-lost \u201cbefore\u201d world of \u201cculture and matters of the heart\u201d(14). During the 2018 Barvinok <\/em>workshop Masha asks Matt \u201cSo, why did you come on this adventure?\u201d (7). It seems a good question to ask again now:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

MASHA: <\/strong>Is this whole thing some sort of an adventure for you? Our marriage? Our son? The war? Is it real for you? […] It\u2019s an action adventure to you. It\u2019s theoretical.<\/p>\n39<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What Matt seems<\/em> to be proposing as a template for their continuing life and art together, may still succeed as an escapist narrative that comforts and sustains him<\/em> within his own imaginative artistic world, but where is she in it? Perhaps his own centre of truth these days lies more in his \u201cjokes\u201d \u201cthat for tax purposes, it actually benefits us to get a divorce and for you to claim refugee status\u201d (36) or that after six months, his mother-in-law is less a guest than \u201can occupying force\u201d (39).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that point, the rupture becomes more than just aesthetic. She leaves, declaring \u201cThis is my life. I am not going to transform the stories of my friends\u2019 and families\u2019 destroyed lives into art. I\u2019m not going to be the source of inspiration for your next play\u201d (39). For a time, their \u201cjourneys\u201d \u2013 aesthetic and personal \u2013 have to move in separate directions to find answers beyond the terms of the initial debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voice and Trauma<\/strong><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
Matthew MacKenzie as Matt in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

If the rupture of war has caused words and art both to fail as forward-moving actions, then perhaps one can move backwards to a simpler, safer psychic space. Matt, left to deal with Ivan and Olga, has less possibilities for retreat, but as a writer he still finds one. Significantly, the audioplay is framed as Ivan\u2019s doting parents telling their recently-born son, presumably at crib-side, the story of \u201chow you came to be here […] In Tkaronto\u201d (27.30) his birth forming the triumphant climax of a three-year love story. This time, Matt actually climbs into the crib in a desperate attempt to stop Ivan\u2019s hysterical crying, and frames the story mostly in terms of \u201cbefore\u201d: \u201cI tell Ivan about what life was like before. Before Mama and Papa got together. Before we welcomed Vanichka. Before a war on the other side of the world turned our lives upside down…before life got real\u201d(40). Masha retreats into the \u201cbefore\u201d of a hotel room in Niagara Falls, the site of a more idyllic interlude with Matt and Canada, that also evokes an earlier self in Ukraine free to enjoy cigarettes, champagne, and the sound of water outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matt\u2013 literally \u2013 makes a crashing return from \u201cbefore\u201d to the present, when he trips getting out of the crib, cuts his head on the dresser, and faints. In the few disoriented, confused moments before he fully wakes up, he also finds himself in the same nightmare zone where it is possible to simultaneously hold in your head the idea of bombs dropping on Ukraine, and of hearing \u201cwith your children […] all these severe explosions\u201d in your own Canadian city (Connelly): \u201cThe room is in disarray… Ivan is crying… Olga is keening… Nevy is licking my wound… Did we get hit by a missile? No. No. We are safe. In sleepy Toronto. But Masha… Masha is not here\u201d (41). Masha, also haunted by the \u201cghosts\u201d of the absent, seeks further escape by joining an excursion of Ukrainian expatriates touring the Falls. For her, the figurative \u201ccrack on the head\u201d comes when the final burst of fireworks that she finds \u201cfantastic\u201d abruptly propels at least one of the party into the same liminal nightmare zone: \u201cThe people of our group say. \u2018Why has she come to see fireworks if she has just come from the war?\u2019[…] Maybe she didn\u2019t even consider she would feel under attack at Niagara Falls\u201d (41).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Mariya Khomutova as Masha in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For both Matt and Masha there is a need to acknowledge that \u201cnothing is normal anymore. Nothing will be as it was before\u201d (41); surviving \u201cnow\u201d \u2013 the long day that never ends – requires acknowledging and embracing the reality of the profound rupture and trauma in the being and lives of ourselves; any move towards an \u201cafter\u201d involves reaching out to others in that same time and place of \u201cnow\u201d and helping each other move forward. For Matt, the actual story is less important than the fact that joining his son in the crib and telling him a story, stops the constant hysterical crying, from whatever point of inarticulate nightmare it is coming from, allowing the child to finally sleep. Masha responds to girl\u2019s rocking and crying by reaching out and holding her close: \u201cHer chest heaves against mine, her heart trying to escape so much pain…\u201d(41).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the play at last circles back to try to answer its initial question: what is the relationship between life and art, personal and artistic voice in a time of war, of profound rupture, dislocation and trauma? Matt concedes that framing their relationship in the familiar, adrenalin-pumping narrative of an \u201cadventure\u201d was partially a way of \u201ccoping\u201d with his anxiety over a relationship and situation developing too quickly to be sure they were \u201creal.\u201d But the writing and the storytelling were never just about \u201cpretending and playing\u201d (39). Writing is an essential expression of \u201cvoice\u201d that helps him hold on to his sanity; turning it outwards into storytelling helps other people and communities hold on to theirs. Matt acknowledges his jokes are not always good \u2013 but laughter, even from bad jokes, can be a way of affirming and celebrating life, humanity and agency in the face of that which tries to extinguish them: \u201cThe constant jokes […] Talking her into writing this play was an attempt to coax her out.[…] I don\u2019t want what\u2019s happening over there, to extinguish you (Masha) here\u201d (42).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masha confesses that she remains uncomfortable with the disconnect between the \u201ctruth\u201d of people\u2019s actual lived experience, and \u201cart\u201d that purports to portray the \u201ctruth\u201d of actual people\u2019s lives and words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

MASHA: <\/strong>I didn\u2019t want to write this play.
I felt empty and torn.
All I had inside was a reflection of the war. <\/p>\n42<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But living indefinitely in that inner space of inarticulate grief, guilt, anger and suffering was not possible either:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

MASHA: <\/strong>But I don\u2019t want to hate. I don\u2019t want to kill.
I want to stop this war. What can I do?
If I don\u2019t have a gun, then what is my weapon? Words?
A voice? <\/p>\n42<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In his lecture at the March 1st 2023 Memorial event, University of Alberta post-doctoral fellow, Alex Averbuch talked about the centrality of \u201cvoice\u201d to an initiative launched through the University of Alberta Kule Folkore Centre on February, 2022: \u201cTestimonies of civilians in Ukraine about the Russian-Ukrainian War.\u201d While mandated \u201cto provide a documentary source for researchers, academics, students, journalists, artists, and the public in general\u201d (\u201cTestimonies\u201d), on a more visceral, immediate level, he suggested, the project allowed ordinary people to speak, be heard, and go on record as individual human beings in the middle of war conditions designed to extinguish, silence, or dehumanize them (Averbuch).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

MASHA: <\/strong>I\u2019m not going to be silent.
I\u2019m not going to stuff it inside anymore.
I have to speak.
And I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s art or not.
My voice means something.
My life means something.
I\u2019m here.
And the people who live inside of me; they are here. And their stories have value, too.<\/p>\nTS 43-44<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Liminalities \u2013 Ukraine and Canada<\/strong><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Using art as a way of finding and recovering personal and cultural \u201cvoice\u201d in the midst of trauma, rupture and war remains an ongoing project shared by the Ukrainian, Ukrainian-Canadian, and Indigenous\/M\u00e9tis communities. Budney confesses herself impressed by the number of people who have \u201carrived recently on account of the war and […] young women in particular\u201d who still practice forms of embroidery and weaving seen in the museum, and \u201care still committed to keeping those customs and those practices alive\u201d (3.00). But perhaps that is not so surprising:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I\u2019ve done a lot of work here myself here in Canada working with First Nations artists over the past twenty-five years and I know that first practicing your culture is one way to survive and forge a path through those horrible processes of colonization. And I think that in Ukraine because that area of land in Europe, in the centre of Europe, the bread basket of Europe has been repeatedly colonized over and over and over again for the last more than one hundred years that this is part of what keeps Ukrainian culture in Ukraine so strong.<\/p>\n3.20<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting in 2023 (\u201cBridging\u201d; \u201cSTORYING\u201d) on her 1977 classic All of Baba\u2019s Children<\/em> Ukrainian-Canadian writer, Myrna Kostash, felt her earlier history of the Ukrainian-Canadian community had not done enough to acknowledge the impact of those older cultural and intergenerational ruptures and trauma. Her goals were meritorious: to tell the story of her own family as Ukrainian-Canadians in Alberta and where she situated herself within that narrative, while exploring the history of the larger Ukrainian-Canadian community. However, by critiquing and deconstructing many of the accepted historical narratives and mythologies in isolation from the rupture and trauma that the original generation \u2013 on both sides of the Atlantic \u2013 had suffered as part of the immigration process, and the rupture and trauma that their settlement on the prairies had simultaneously caused the original indigenous community, she had inadvertently perpetuated some of those mythologies herself: \u201c[W]ith neither the ancestral [Ukrainian] nor Indigenous Peoples visible or legible to me, the Ukrainian Canadian imaginary was a set of symbols and activities rooted entirely in locations made-in-Canada such as historical sites, community and church halls, summer camps, weddings, dance festivals\u201d (Ghosts<\/em> 7).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One solution, as suggested in Ghosts in a Photograph<\/em>, was an extended journey similar to Makuch\u2019s in returning to her family\u2019s original community in Ukraine and refinding the parts of her community, family, self and \u201cvoice\u201d that she had not even realized were missing. The second was to help found the Indigenous-Ukrainian Relationship Building Initiative, the group that co-organized with Punctuate! Theatre the roundtable after the May 7th<\/sup>, 2023 performance in Edmonton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time it was suggested that if the interconnections between the two groups included similarities in the use of colour, beadwork and embroidery, they were also represented by crossovers in drama and literature – and a continuation of the dialogue started in the play about the need to find an authentic theatrical \u201cvoice\u201d to express and heal trauma across communities especially in a time of war. One person at the forum who self-identified as a \u201cUkrainian Canadian playwright and storyteller\u201d commented to Khomutova that she also had \u201cbeen thinking deeply\u201d about how to \u201ctell stories in this time of intense trauma for our community in a way that is safe.\u201d She too had moved \u201cto telling my own story because that\u2019s a story that I have control over and I\u2019m not putting anyone else\u2019s emotional vulnerabilities at risk.\u201d But knowing how \u201cintensely difficult\u201d that was, \u201cI just want to laud you for your bravery in putting your own story on the stage\u201d (1.01.32).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khomutova responded:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The most famous Ukrainian playwrights are discussing the same thing: how to write about the war in conditions of war. […] And I think it correlates with your experience and our experience […] The most newly written plays are voices just of personal experience of every single playwright. They’re not writing about others \u2013 […] it’s very rare. They’re just writing about what they have gone through.<\/p>\n1.04.22<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The result was a kind of intimate theatre not really designed \u201cfor big stages.\u201d But perhaps those stories \u201chave to start from small, small spaces\u201d before they can \u201cbecome something louder and bigger. […] That’s the only possibility how we can go through this trauma and how we can heal ourselves and heal others\u201d (1.05.22).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of \u201chealing others\u201d the playwrights were asked about audience response to the production. MacKenzie said that he loved \u201cthe hyperspecific dramaturgy from the Ukrainian-Canadian community\u201d (Interview): one audience member in Toronto indicated that the tomtit would not be dancing a hopak \u2013 a dance from central Ukraine – in the Carpathian Mountains, but a regional dance about moving into the sunlight. In Vancouver, an Indigenous person suggested that maybe he should \u201cspeak a little more to the genocide that\u2019s occurred amongst the indigenous peoples here\u201d (Interview). For those who had arrived recently from Ukraine, some, by their own admission, were triggered to tears by the material, while one fellow-Odesan claimed that seeing her story presented onstage actually allowed her to release all her accumulated stress in laughter (\u201cSTORYING\u201d 1.03.26).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MacKenzie, noted that what impressed them most, though, was the number of people, Indigenous, Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian who came out to see the show and stayed to talk afterwards. In Toronto alone, \u201cpeople stuck around and spoke with us for two hours after almost every performance […] so it really felt like the show was part of a larger conversation\u201d (Interview). Equally striking, were the many people they met \u201cwho have Ukrainian and Indigenous blood\u201d and were \u201cvery happy to introduce themselves as both\u201d (\u201cSTORYING\u201d 41.16). In that regard, a particular highlight, was the play\u2019s first staged reading at Smoky Lake, a small town in East-central Alberta. Performing before an audience that was almost completely Ukrainian and M\u00e9tis, made it a great place \u201cto start our journey\u201d (Interview). M\u00e9tis poet, Naomi McIlwrith, further notes, \u201cI can\u2019t think of any more profound way to have a connection.\u201d Especially during a time of war, people like her stand as an embodied reminder that our ancestors often made \u201clove instead of war\u201d (\u201cSTORYING\u201d 36.15).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liminalities \u2013 Closing a Circle<\/strong><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
Matthew MacKenzie as Matt in First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, directed by Lianna Makuch. Punctuate!Theatre. Spring, 2023. Photo: Alexis McKeown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For Myrna Kostash, Ghosts in a Photograph<\/em> was meant to \u201cclose a circle\u201d begun forty years earlier with All of Baba\u2019s Children <\/em>(\u201cBridging\u201d 17).\u201cGoing in circles\u201d can mean unwittingly looping back to the start and following one\u2019s own tracks in increasingly disoriented circles while assuming one is moving forward. By contrast, \u201cclosing a circle\u201d implies spiraling back to complete what was started but at a higher place of wholeness, awareness, and healing. Budney similarly suggests that moving forwards might simultaneously involve circling back to recover, renew, and regenerate older patterns, traditions, and celebrations not as \u201cartifacts from the past\u201d but as valued and purposeful ways of \u201csustaining life, and […] preserving community\u201d (11.32).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FMMO23 <\/em>in a way loops back to its start: that liminal space between coming and going, true love and heartbreak, war and peace<\/em> (TS Title page]. There is no \u201cclosing of the circle\u201d on the war, no resetting of the clock that can restore people to the lives and selves they had before<\/em>; in that sense, the long day that began on February 24th<\/sup>, 2022 continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the couple has also come to realize that as people they cannot go on living indefinitely in that \u201cin-between place\u201d (42). In Barvinok, <\/em>Pavlo tells Hania that his own war time marriage ended because: \u201cTatiana wanted to move on. But I \u2013 couldn\u2019t. I can\u2019t\u201d (1.19.57). Moving on together means that regardless of what is happening in the outside world, they \u201chave to stay out of [their] brains\u201d and away from the deadly spin into \u201cfantasies\u201d and \u201cdisappearing\u201d (43) \u2013 and stay grounded in the \u201creal\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

(MATT takes MASHA\u2019s hands.)<\/span>
MATT: <\/strong>This is real.
MASHA: <\/strong>This is real. I need you.
MATT: <\/strong>I need you too.<\/p>\n44<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In terms of the aesthetic argument, there is no return of the backdrop to its original form, but Masha\u2019s quiet tidying away of the torn curtain, and realignment of the Greek column suggests the stage is moving into preset for some action yet to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, they live in hope that a new season will bring peace again, and that when \u201cthe long day,\u201d finally ends, time will restart and begin to move forward once more, allowing the long-delayed trip back to Odesa so Ivan can meet his Ukrainian grandfather. More profoundly, Ivan himself is a sign that the next turn of the cycle towards new life and growth is already in motion. This, in turn, drives the hope that in the larger world as well time will move beyond the monotonous, futile circles of Groundhog Day<\/em> and more fully into the larger, regenerative cycles of new and returning life: love and poetry will return in the form of \u201ctwo little birds\u201d (45) who will start the long flight back from the Canadian prairies to Ukraine, stopping to dance a ritual M\u00e9tis jig and hopak along the way, and with them will fly their embodied hope for the future, their \u201csqueakling,\u201d \u201cour laughing, dancing, little star through this war\u201d (45):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

MATT: <\/strong>Then, you will have come full circle, Vanichka.
MASHA: <\/strong>First M\u00e9tis man of Odesa.<\/p>\n46<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
Bibliography<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Applebaum, Anne and Jeffrey Goldberg. \u201cLiberation Without Victory.\u201d The Atlantic<\/em>, 15 Apr. 2022. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Averbuch, Alex. \u201cWritings from the War: Archiving and Disseminating Testimonials of Ukrainians.\u201d Vigil for Ukraine and Day of Solidarity<\/em>, Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Edmonton, 1 March 2023, St. Joseph\u2019s College, University of Alberta. Conference Presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Budney, Jen. \u201cA Stop at the Ukrainian Museum of Canada (Saskatoon).\u201d 15.40. THREADS Cultural Conversations<\/em>, Saskatoon Open Door Society, 25-26 Jan. 2023, online. Conference Presentation. THREADS Library. threadslibrary.ca. Accessed 17 Sept. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connelly, Amanda. \u201cTranscript of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s Speech to Parliament.\u201d Global News,<\/em> 15 March 2022. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dovzhyk, Dr, Sasha. \u201cInvasion and Violence Accelerated Evolution of Ukrainian Resilience and Identity.\u201d Interviewer: Jonathan Fink, 26 July 2023, 50.58 min. \u201cUkrainian Voices.\u201d Silicon Curtain<\/em>. Youtube. Accessed 13 Aug 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFree Ukrainian Supper (Borshch and Perogies) with testimonials from Ukrainian students.\u201d Vigil for Ukraine and Day of Solidarity<\/em>, Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Edmonton, 1 March 2023, St. Joseph\u2019s College, University of Alberta. Testimonial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Government of Canada. \u201cCanada-Ukrainian authorization for emergency travel: key figures.\u201d Canada.ca. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIndigenous-Ukrainian Relationship Building Initiative.\u201dstoriesoftheselands.ca. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kostash, Myrna. All of Baba\u2019s Children<\/em>. NeWest, 1977.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. Ghosts in a Photograph.<\/em> NeWest, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kostash, Myrna and Anita Ogurlu. \u201cBridging the Gaps \u2013 A Ukrainian Canadian Writer as Settler.\u201d 14.56 min. THREADS Cultural Conversations<\/em>, Saskatoon Open Door Society, 25-26 Jan. 2023, 14.56 online. Conference Presentation. THREADS Library. threadslibrary.ca. Accessed 17 Sept. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kushnir, Andrew. \u201cWhy is Canadian Theatre So Russian Right Now?\u201d Intermission<\/em>, 24 Feb., 2023. intermissionmagazine.ca. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Levytsky, Marco. \u201cBlood of Our Soil<\/em> [now Barvinok<\/em>] Receives Tremendous Response: Heart-Rending Production Depicts Past and Present Tragedies of Ukrainian People.\u201d New Pathway<\/em> Ukrainian News.<\/em> 13 March 2018. newpathway.ca. Accessed 11 Oct 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MacKenzie. Matthew. \u201cFirst M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa.\u201d Directed by Nina Lee Aquino, Performance by Christine Horne and Craig Lauzon, 1 Apr. 2021, 30.16 min. You Can\u2019t Get There From Here, <\/em>Season 1, Episode 2, Factory Theatre. Audioplay and transcript. listennotes.com. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MacKenzie, Matthew and Mariya Khomutova. First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa. <\/em>Directed by Lianna Makuch, performance by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova, Punctuate!Theatre, 13 April \u2013 May 22 2023, Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, AB. Toronto premiere 30 March-08 Apr. 2023, The Theatre Centre, Toronto, ON. Digital archival recording accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em>. TS. 16 May, 2023. pp. 1-46.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. ZOOM Interview. 08 June 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Makuch, Lianna. Barvinok <\/em>(Originally Blood of Our Soil<\/em>). Directed by Patrick Lundeen, performance by Lianna Makuch et al, Pyretic Productions. Toronto premiere, 07-16 March, 2023, Tarragon Theatre Extraspace, Toronto, ON. Digital recording, 148 min. pyreticproductions.ca. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. Alina. <\/em>Directed by Patrick Lundeen, performance by Christina Nguyen and Lora Brovold, Pyretic Productions, 24 May \u2013 05 June, 2023, Studio Theatre, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB. Production information. pyreticproductions.ca. Accessed 11 Oct. 202<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMoscow Mechanism: Report on Violations and Abuses of International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, related to the Forcible Transfer and\/or Deportation of Ukrainian Children to the Russian Federation.\u201d Report of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism\u2019s mission of experts, 04 May 2023, pp.1-80. OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe). osce.org. Accessed 11 Oct 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy Next Guest<\/em> with David Letterman and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.\u201d 26 Dec 2022. Kyiv, Ukraine, 44:01 min. Netflix. youtube.com. Accessed 11 Oct 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicholls, Liz. \u201cA cultural inheritance, a quest, and a haunting: Barvinok<\/em> launches a tour here.\u201d 12th<\/sup> Night.ca<\/em>\/Liz Nicholls on Theatre, <\/em>16 Sept 2022. 12thnight.ca. Accessed 11 Oct 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trudeau, Justin. \u201cPrime Minister [Trudeau] delivers an address at the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.\u201d 10 June 2023, 25.59 min. youtube.com. Accessed 11 Oct 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSTORYING Indigenous \u2013 Ukrainian \u2013 Canadian RELATIONSHIPS.\u201d Roundtable following production of First M\u00e9tis Man of Odesa<\/em> in Edmonton, AB, 07 May 2023, 1:14.54 min. Sponsored by Punctuate!Theatre and Indigenous-Ukrainian Relationship Building Initiative. Panelists: Myrna Kostash, Naomi McIlwraith, Matthew Mackenzie and Mariya Khomutova, facilitated by Lianna Makuch. youtube.com. Accessed 11 Oct 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTestimonies of Civilians in Ukraine About the Russian-Ukrainian War.\u201d Writings from the War project. uawitness.com<\/a>. Accessed 5 Sept 5 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTotal Bilateral Aid Commitments to Ukraine Between January 24, 2022 and May 31, 2023, by type and country or organization.\u201d Statista.<\/em> statista.com<\/a>. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUkrainian Canadians.\u201d Wikipedia. Accessed 17 Sept. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Umansky, Yuriy. \u201cCanada is Facing the Largest Wave of Ukrainian Immigration Ever.\u201d New Canadian Media,<\/em> 28 April 2023. newcanadianmedia.ca<\/a>. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cZelensky Compares Russian Assassination Attempts to Groundhog Day<\/em>.\u201d Axios<\/em>. 23 May, 2022. Axios.com<\/a>. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cZelensky\u2019s Interview for Latin American Media (2023) Ukraine News.\u201d 03 June 2023, 1.30.32 min. Odesa Film Studio. youtube.com. Accessed 11 Oct 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelenskyy, Volodymyr. Address by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy: \u201cFebruary. The Year of Invincibility.\u201d 24 February 2023. Transcript. President of Ukraine: Official website. president.gov.ua<\/a>. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Moira Day<\/strong> is a professor emerita of Drama at the University of Saskatchewan. A former book editor and co-editor of Theatre Research in Canada<\/em> \/Recherches th\u00e9\u00e2trales au Canada<\/em> she has published and lectured widely on Canadian theatre, with a particular focus on women and prairie theatre prior to 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2023 Moira Day
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN:2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Creative<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This work is licensed under the
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