Jessica Rose, Michaela Washburnm, Cassandra Bourchier in Kohkum’s Babushka by Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine. Photo by Abigail Edwards.
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
When the co-creators of Kohkom’s Babushka, one Ukrainian and the other Métis, were 12 years old, they became best friends forever. Instantly inseparable. And that lasting friendship between Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine is at the heart of their play for kids coming to the Servus Credit Union stage at La Cité francophone in a Punctuate!/Pyretic Productions collaboration before a four-stop tour to Alberta Indigenous communities.
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Theatre artist BFFs: it happened in junior high, on the first day of Grade 7. Ballendine and Makuch were in the same home room class. They discovered they lived next door but one, so they walked home from school together. They watched Days Of Our Lives together after school. They watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer together on weekends.
They took drama classes together; they created their own theatre together.“We made weird little skits together and filmed them,” says Makuch. She remembers Ballendine at the playground, pretending to be French; “I backed her up, of course! ‘This is my French friend’…. We made make-believe worlds together.”
Joleen Ballendine and Lianna Makuch, co-authors of Kohkum’s Babushka. Photo supplied.
After high school they were in theatre school (the U of A) together. In their early 20s, they did Fringe shows together (like George F. Walker’s Tough), and wrote them, too (their 2013 satire Excuse Me, This Is The Truth is one). “Yup, we’ve been frequent collaborators now for over two decades!” says Makuch, whose award-winning original play archive includes Barvinok and Alina. She’s also a director (her Dora Award-winning production of Matthew McKenzie’s First Métis Man of Odesa is currently running at Theatre Calgary).
At a certain point their focal points diverged. “Lianna was doing a lot more theatre; I was doing a lot more comedy,” says Ballendine, a Rapid Fire Theatre improv star (and the company’s director of outreach), who writes for both stage and television.
With Kohkom’s Babushka, the two long-term friends have have created a show for kids (eight and older), that’s about friendship and celebrates theirs, as they explore the links between their two cultures: Makuch is Ukrainian; Ballendine is Métis.
Makuch came across the book by Saskatchewan author Marion Mutala when she was shopping for a gift for Ivan, the baby son of Punctate!’s Métis resident playwright MacKenzie and his wife Ukrainian actor Mariya Khomutova. “Here was a beautiful little book about Ivan’s history.”
Ah, inspiration! “Joleen had just had a child. And the idea of creating something for young people was really on my mind,” says Makuch. “I knew it wasn’t really my story to tell (alone). But I happen to be Ukrainian and my best friend happens to be Métis….” And writing a play for kids inspired by Mutala’s book about that was “an expression of our friendship, that turned out to be a beautiful personal exploration of our individual cultures; it set us on our own ancestral paths, both together and individually.”
Since its birth as one of the play seedlings at Concrete Theatre’s Sprouts Festival, Kohkom’s Babushka has had three different development periods, thanks to the Banff Centre, where it premiered last year. And Makuch’s cast, led by the notable Métis actor Michaela Washburn, includes recent MacEwan grads Robyn Cook and Kit Brooks, with Aidan Laudersmith.
Jessica Rose and Cassandra Bourchier in Kohkom’s Babushka by Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine. Set and lighting design: Stephanie Bahniuk. Photo by Abigail Edwards.
With the book as “a launching point,” plus the inspiration of their own friendship, the playwright duo have fashioned a theatrical story of two girls, one Ukrainian and one Métis, who are best friends, a story that takes them back to the past,” as Ballendine describes. They’ve had a falling out, and find themselves mysteriously transported back to 1892, when the first Ukrainian settlers arrived in the prairies and had a relationship, a substantial cultural connection, with Métis people.
The girls have to cooperate in order to find their way back to the present and save a cherished tree from the ax. And along the way they discover the historic intertwining of their two cultural traditions, including the signature scarves. Did you know that babushka is originally a Cree word? “Where and when did those relationships diverge. And what do we do now?” as Makush says.
For Makuch, whose Ukrainian inheritance and identity has had a powerful impact on her creative life, it’s been “an interesting time to examine what it means to be Ukrainian in Canada, what it means to be an ally as a Ukrainian person, what reconciliation looks like through a Ukrainian lens. What is our role in colonialism?” And there’s an unmistakeable alignment, too, “between Ukraine’s current (and continuing) struggle for independence and freedom against a colonial power and the Indigenous fight for justice against Western systems of oppression.… A lot of room for reflection there.”
But “Kohkom’s Babushka is a story for children: big ideas for little people!” as Makuch says. “It’s why Joleen and I felt so compelled to tell this story of reconciliation, in an accessible way, for kids…. It’s been a challenge, a really rewarding challenge.” Ballendine calls it, a “big conversation” that reveals itself through the idea of friendship. “That’s the ‘in’ for kids…. And there’s a matriarchal heartbeat too.”
PREVIEW
Kohkom’s Babushka
Theatre: Punctuate! Theatre and Pyretic Productions
Created by: Joleen Ballendine and Lianna Makuch
Directed by: Lianna Makuch
Starring: Michaela Washburn, Robyn Cook, Kit Brooks, Aidan Laudersmith
Where: Servus Credit Union Theatre at La Cité francophone, 8627 91 St.
Running: school performances Sept. 23 to 25 and Sept. 28 and 29; public performances Sept. 26, 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., with a Métis-Ukrainian Celebration Hub including live music, dance workshops, food, vendors; Sept. 30 (in honour of National Day For Truth and Reconciliation) 1 p.m.
Tickets: https://www.punctuatetheatre.com/kohkoms-babushka