Running from Sept. 11 to 27, the Punctuation! Theatre production has hit Theatre Calgary stages for the first time, though it’s not the first rodeo for the playwrights and lead performers, Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khoumutova. 

Since its premiere at Western Canada Theatre in 2023, the play has been produced several times, having received three Dora Mavor Moore Awards for outstanding production, new work, and direction in 2024.

Although the play hasn’t run for several years, the pair said the technical aspects mainly needed refreshing, while the content remains unforgettable, since they wrote it from their own lives.

The First Métis Man of Odesa follows MacKenzie and Khoumutova as Matt and Masha, who met, married, and became parents during the back-to-back conflicts of the pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war.

With a relationship involuntarily defined by devastation and uncertainty, the couple decided to write their own story: one that doesn’t ignore the hardship, but explores it by focusing on the joys of life that persevere despite it. 

From lived experience to live theatre

MacKenzie, an Edmonton-based Métis playwright, first met Khoumutova, a classically trained performer from Odesa, at a theatre workshop in Kyiv in 2018. Director Lianna Makuch also attended and recalled how it was “only fitting” that they would meet through theatre. 

From there, it was full steam ahead. Audiences can relate as they watch the couple navigate the typical customs of a blossoming relationship, such as intertwining each other’s daily routines and meeting the parents. 

Everything was ordinary until it wasn’t, as the play progresses to encapsulate the eerie, all-too-familiar feeling of the pandemic growing into a global threat, which happened almost immediately after MacKenzie flew home to Canada in February 2020.

Khoumutova later learned she was pregnant, and they married and welcomed their son, Ivan, that same year. They faced additional challenges in 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Khoumutova said her husband suggested writing the play together then, while they were living through the climax. At that point, their young family, including her mother, had moved to Canada, and she felt disconnected from her Ukrainian heritage.

Documentary-style plays are relatively common in Canada on the independent scene, MacKenzie said, unlike Eastern European theatre, which is dominated by traditional, century-old Russian classics.

That difference in form meant turning the story into theatre would require Khoumutova to unlearn much of what her training had taught her, while asking both of them to be comfortable revisiting challenging moments in their life.  

Seeking purpose in the silver linings

Khoumutova said her performing arts education discouraged actors from inserting themselves into the story, favouring objectivity. She said playing her authentic self meant rewiring what she knew. 

“It was absolutely a new way of thinking about whether I’m interesting material enough myself to bring my biography and my life on stage,” she said.

“I struggled with that a lot.”

This is what Khoumutova said made it easier for her husband to reach that place of sincerity, seeing as MacKenzie is not an actor by trade. He described stepping back into his past self as an opportunity to reflect. 

“It definitely is a level of vulnerability that I’m not used to with a lot of my other work,” said MacKenzie. 

“So, performing to folks really feels like an offering rather than just your standard play.”

Khoumutova said that she agreed to create the play because it gave her a sense of purpose. In some ways, she said that it is her version of a protest, as it not only preserves but also revitalizes her culture, which MacKenzie called “a great honour.”

Over the years, the couple has found it easier to reflect on difficult periods with humour and perspective, although unpleasant feelings still linger, as Khoumutova said happened during their rehearsal two weeks ago.

“It’s hard, and then it’s therapeutic,” she said. 

“How we as a family went through the war and through my mom’s coming here — that was very hard. We’re really vulnerable in the piece, I think, really telling it like it was.”

The couple hopes their play not only lets others feel heard through the arts, but also reminds audiences that life — in all its wonderfully unpredictable twists and turns — continues in the face of adversity. 

“We really wanted to have this note of hope and having a dream, having a sense of living in spite of all the difficult times that we’re all going through together,” said Khoumutova. 

“But not to really fall into the feeling of despair that we are all lost.”

Evening performances on Tuesdays and Sundays will begin at 7:30 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets start at $30 for main floor seating and are available at theatrecalgary.com.