When MacKenzie and Khomutova met, the odds were stacked against them: they lived half a world apart from each other, and they each had lives and commitments and passions of their own; too, though they didn't know it at the time, their lives were about to be turned upside down and then inside out by a pandemic and then a war. But life does not always follow the odds, and this is that story.

It's a curious thing, reading a nonfiction play. "First Métis Man of Odesa" was born out of frustration, in part: frustration that their relationship was impacted so much by external forces, and frustration that there was so little they could do about the war in Ukraine. The structure is as much MacKenzie and Khomutova telling their story as it is them acting it out, but one of the things I love about plays is that the rules are so different than the rules for writing, say, a novel.

While this play was pretty clearly written to be performed by the writers, it would be fascinating to see the differences on stage between their own interpretation (i.e., the play as written) and the interpretation of two actors who do not know the writers—there are a number of lines where inflection would determine meaning. Is this line angry or sad or passionate? What the actor and director decides changes the shape of the scene. (Again, plays work differently from novels; this ambiguity is a plus.) I sort of love that this is a collaboration between a writer and an actor, and they both wrote and acted despite not having experience in each other's realms.

The Canadian tour of this play wrapped up recently, so I imagine no chance of seeing it anytime soon, but one to return to for explorations in playwriting.

Thanks to the authors and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

This play chronicles the story of Masha and Matt meeting and falling in love across not only great distance, but also the terrible uncertainty and loss of war and the pandemic. The play is beautifully written—it is funny and heartbreaking and hopeful. We fall in love with Masha and Matt so easily and find ourselves rooting for them as they navigate such tremendous obstacles with grace and clarity and commitment. It is their art, indeed the writing of this play, that helps grounds the characters—even as they grapple with the difficulties of making art in times of war and suffering.

I found that the play succeeded in communicating on a deeper level to our collective experiences over the past several years of turmoil. I found myself weeping not just for these characters, who I knew were based on real people, but for the broader suffering that we are witnessing now in Ukraine, now in Palestine.

But the play is also a broader meditation on the role of art in times of war. It seems to grapple with the same sentiments Theodor Adorno was voicing when he voiced his famous “there can be no poetry after Auschwitz”—in other words, that to make art through and from suffering both exposes the ways in which our artistic forms are artifice AND underscores the ways in which art is precisely the only form in which we can ever possibly hope to capture and convey the enormity and scale of of such seismic changes. I think this is why I was so struck by the pacing of the play. It is episodic and full of small shifts and pauses that covey the larger, more profound, shifts of moods and time and borders.

The biggest shift is in Masha’s sense of the purpose for this story in this play. Take this excerpt from the beginning, where Matt suggests art’s role in sharing real stories:

“MASHA: I’m not sure that writing a play based on the real words of real people can be art.
MATT: Reality can be art.
MASHA: But it’s not “real” the moment you put a person’s real words into an actor’s mouth.
MATT: It’s not “real” in a literal sense, but I think there is the potential power to communicate a deeper truth through performance.”

But by the end, Masha’s discomfort about sharing stories has shifted and she feels compelled into voicing them—the question of art is a theoretical one for other times and greater distances—in this moment, voicing the story is an act of bearing witness:

“MASHA: If I don’t have a gun, then what is my weapon? Words?
A voice.
I’m not going to be silent.
I’m not going to stuff it inside anymore.
I have to speak.
And I don’t care if it’s art or not.
My voice means something.
My life means something.
I’m here.
And the people who live inside of me; they are here. And their stories have value, too.”