Those who love a good take on a murder mystery, whether it’s an old-fashioned Agatha Christie novel or an episode of CSI, and love to play detective and try to figure out who did it, might want to take note of The Belfry’s newest play, Yaga.
According to Nicholas Nahwegahbow, the actor who plays both Rapp and Henry in the show, Yaga is about telling the important story of Baba Yaga.
“My co-star, her name is Anastasiia [Ziurkalova], and my assistant director, her name is Diana [Budiachenko]… they’re from Kyiv and they are joining us and helping us tell the story of Baba Yaga, which is a Slavic folklore story,” says Nahwegahbow.
While the play is centred around a witch, the classic definition of “witch” doesn’t encapsulate what those working on Yaga hope to accomplish.
“We’re changing the definition of the word ‘witch’ a little bit,” says Nahwegahbow. “We are trying to reclaim the power of motherhood, women, and femininity. Particularly for one of the characters, she’s a professor and she’s 60 years old and she has somewhat of a romantic entanglement with a younger boy named Henry who goes missing. It’s a bit of a whodunit, murder-mystery kind of piece. It’s very exciting.”
Nahwegahbow says that he loves working on Yaga because of the play’s fun nature and how it upsets traditional relations between men and women.
“I like the pace of it, I like how much fun it is,” he says. “I like how it changes the power dynamics between men and women… Typically, traditionally, men are very much in positions of power and in this play it is the opposite. The women know more and they do more.”
The best part of Nahwegahbow’s time on the play was preparing the opening scene.
“The best day we had on the play so far would have to be working on the opening scene,” he says, “because it was very exciting to jump into the text after working on it independently.”
Nahwegahbow says the toughest challenges that he and the crew faced in bringing Yaga to life was the intimate perspective of the play.
“I think a big challenge is the intimacy of the scenes, which we have an intimacy director for,” he says. “There’s moments where characters touch and are very close and having to have the trust of your scene partner can be very difficult… It’s a little bit of a challenge, but everyone here is very, very open-minded, and open-hearted, and trusting.”
The main thing that people should expect from Yaga, says Nahwegahbow, is to have fun and to gain a little bit of knowledge about the Slavic people.
“I think the audiences can expect a fun murder-mystery ride which changes their perspective on the word ‘witch,’” he says. “I want the audience to take away a bit of knowledge about Slavic culture as well as a bit of knowledge of the story of Baba Yaga, which is very familiar to Ukrainian and Russian people. I would also like the audience to know that we are welcoming Ukrainian actors on our stages and that we support and stand with Ukraine.”
Yaga
Various times, until Sunday, October 8
Various prices, The Belfry
belfry.bc.ca