A Ukrainian woman + a Métis man + a Russian invasion

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This article was published 01/11/2023 (730 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova met onstage in a soon-to-be combat zone, which might explain why the timeline of their love story reads like the table of contents in an epic wartime novel.

In October 2018, MacKenzie, a Métis playwright, travelled to Kyiv to serve as dramaturge on Barvinok, a production inspired by personal accounts from Ukrainian citizens during the Second World War, amid the earliest rumblings of a full-on Russian invasion. Khomutova, an Odesan actor, was in the cast.

“My impression was that Matthew wasn’t like a typical theatre-maker,” Khomutova says. “Because, usually, people who do theatre are very self-involved, speaking about what they’ve achieved, what they’ve worked on.”

MacKenzie, a citizen of the Métis Nation of Alberta, didn’t let on that he was a decorated playwright; all Khomutova knew was the gig paid well.

They were charmed by one another and once MacKenzie returned home, their friendship blossomed. The two shared thousands of messages and memes over Facebook Messenger for about a year before MacKenzie finally said what was on his mind.

“I worked up the nerve to ask her if she might fancy me, as I fancied her,” he says. “Apparently, she’d been waiting a long time for me to ask that.”

The fancying was mutual. Before they’d even kissed, Khomutova was on a plane to Toronto to see if sparks would fly. Then, in February 2020, MacKenzie returned to Odesa for work and to meet Khomutova’s parents.

Then came the pandemic. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And then, finally, came the positive pregnancy test.

What unfolded next was a mission of reunification. Against a backdrop of global conflict and global pandemic, a personal journey was underway. It made for a compelling narrative befitting the stage; the pair eventually used their own courtship as the basis for their first theatrical collaboration, The First Métis Man of Odesa, which kicks off Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Warehouse season on Thursday.

“When we were living through it, I never thought it would be onstage,” says the Method-trained Khomutova. “I never had this point of view of my own life that I can be the story. I never had this perception because I was raised on classical literature. The material we staged in our theatre was based on someone else’s work.

“We were told that if you want to be a good actor, you have to play classical repertoire.”

But that training began to shift when Khomutova recognized she was living through history, a current and inescapable form of sensory memory, particularly after the Russian invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

“That’s when we recognized we needed more contemporary drama in Ukraine,” she says. Something more than The Seagull could fly in Kiev.

In 2021, MacKenzie wrote a radio play based on their experience, eventually developing a 100-page draft he describes as a light romantic comedy. The full-out invasion in February 2022 added more drama to the mix. “The nature of the story was suddenly very different,” says MacKenzie.

“To her credit, (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre artistic director) Kelly Thornton programmed the show when it was still in draft form, before we even knew what we had,” he adds.

The production pushed both MacKenzie and Khomutova out of their comfort zones, with Khomutova delving into autobiographical theatre — a specialty of MacKenzie’s — and MacKenzie taking on his first acting role.

“I definitely tried to figure out ways to hire someone to play me,” he says with a laugh. “But I approached my friend Sheldon Elter (a frequent collaborator) and he read it and said, ‘I really think you have to play yourself.’”

More than 70 performances later, The First Métis Man of Odesa makes its première at the Tom Hendry Warehouse after a multi-city run.

Both MacKenzie and Khomutova are excited to see how their show is received by audiences in Winnipeg, a city at the heart of the Métis nation that also boasts a proud Ukrainian Canadian community.

“Any time you go onstage or write something, it’s vulnerable, and this is a different kind of vulnerability,” says MacKenzie. “And that’s why the incredibly warm response we’ve had from Ukrainian and Indigenous folks across the country has been so lovely.”

For the couple, writing about their experience has been therapeutic.

“It really saved us from insanity, from depression,” says Khomutova. “Other people may have felt similarly or gone through similar things, but they didn’t have the opportunity to put it onstage. We’re very grateful we had this tool.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com