Role: Apprentice Assistant Stage Manager

Neptune Theatre’s Ballad of the Motherland

21 March to 2 April 2023

Neptune’s Fountain Hall stage in Halifax, NS

Synopsis:

“In 2014, down-on-her-luck writer Kate was thrilled to land an internship at a prestigious international magazine in Kyiv. What an opportunity to explore her ancestral homeland and culture first-hand! Little did Kate know she was about to become both witness to a major turning point in history, and an unwitting participant in it.

While on a mission to connect to her father’s Russian-Ukrainian roots in the Donbas region, Kate found herself in a military zone controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Under suspicion of being a “Western operative” for the newly minted Kyiv government, she was detained by armed militia and spent many days in captivity, her only access to the world through an inscrutable, volatile young local tasked with her custody.

The story of her abduction made international headlines. But Kate herself has never publicly talked about the events of eight years ago – until now.

As she pieces together memories in real time against the ever-looming reality of an ongoing war in Ukraine, Kate grapples with her own fractured cultural identity, the dissonance between public and personal narrative, and the surprising survival strategies we reach for in the face of improbable odds.

Ballad of the Motherland is loosely inspired by true events that took place during the early days of the Donbas conflicts (2014). All characters portrayed are fictional.” (Neptune Theatre)

Check out the reviews —

Ballad of the Motherland plunges humanity’s dark depth in wartime (Art Critique)

Inspired by true events, Ballad of the Motherland could not be more timely (Halifax Presents)

Ballad of the Motherland: On Nuance and Borders (TWISI: The Way I See It)