A fight for the past in a current war
Lianna Makuch wrote and stars in Blood of Our Soil as a Ukrainian-Canadian woman searching for her roots. Blood of Our Soil (out of 4) Written by Lianna Makuch, directed by Patrick Lundeen. Until March 16 at Tarragon Theatre Extraspace, 30 Bridgman Ave.
“Canada. Western State of Ukraine,” the Ukrainian soldier Misha (Maxwell Theodore Lebeuf) comments dryly to the crusading Ukrainian-Canadian woman Hania (Lianna Makuch), who’s travelled to the current war zone in Donbass to search for her family roots.
Through internet-enabled personal networks, Hania has found Misha and his ex-battalion-mate Pavlo (Oscar Derkx), who works as a fixer. The two men help Hania across checkpoints and into near-deserted cities, getting ever closer to the story of what happened to the family her Baba (grandmother) left behind when she escaped Nazi occupation in 1944.
If this sounds like great fodder for a nail-biting contemporary wartime road movie, you’re right, and I wonder if some smart person has picked up the film rights to this story yet.
Meanwhile, it’s part of a refreshingly innovative and informative theatre piece from Pyretic Productions in association with Punctuate! Theatre, visiting Tarragon’s Extraspace after successful Edmonton runs.
Blood of Our Soil is a semiautobiographical play inspired by Makuch’s discovery of her grandmother’s journal chronicling her Second World Warera emigration.
Makuch, director Patrick Lundeen and dramaturge Matthew MacKenzie travelled to Ukraine twice to research the piece, gathering stories of the current conflict alongside those of Makuch’s family, and workshopped the show with a theatre company in Kyiv. What makes the show remarkable are the different modes of theatrical storytelling it employs and the central place of music in them.
The first half is a Canada-set monologue delivered by Makuch, in which she mostly plays Hania but also takes on Baba’s voice remembering the past.
In a style reminiscent of MacKenzie’s award-winning Bears, currently at Factory Theatre, a chorus of five supplement Makuch’s story through physical actions and vocal and instrumental music (the remarkable musical direction is by Larissa Pohoreski and the ensemble singing is haunting).
The clarity of the storytelling is an achievement, because what’s happening is complex.
As Hania tells us, Baba is increasingly obsessed with the current war in Ukraine and we slowly figure out it’s triggering memories of the 1940s.
Our confusion initially mirrors that of the old woman, but Hania keeps asking questions and discovers that Baba desper- ately wants to know what happened to the female relatives she left behind.
And so, just as the monologue and the folkloric feel start to run their course, the entire mode of theatricality changes: Hania goes to Ukraine and into the dialogue-driven, road-movie-like storytelling.
The chorus performers show off acting chops through a number of memorable characters: Lisa Norton sensitively plays a displaced young mother, and Pohoreski and Tanya Pacholok are affecting as sisters with different views on the current war.
Through Derkx’s Pavlo we hear about the motivations of some young Ukrainians to join the conflict, and Lebeuf’s Misha offers a grimly funny story about the risks of naming your rocket launcher after your ex.
It’s only in a short final monologue that the writing and performance tip over into generalized sentiment about joy, tears and resilience.
Otherwise Makuch, Lundeen and MacKenzie have done a remarkable job of creating a theatrical experience that ties together a heritage journey with thoughtful commentary on a place tragically caught up in cycles of oppression and violence.