Some roles ask an actor to imagine another life. Others ask them to inhabit one that has already been lived. For actor, composer, and producer Daniel Maslany, stepping into writer-director Andrew Kushnir’s The Division means navigating the space between these two demands.
The reason? Maslany plays a version of Kushnir himself in the world premiere of this show, which is presented by Project: Humanity and Pyretic Productions in association with Crow’s Theatre. The role is intimate and historically based, shaped by documentary material and personal testimony.
Kushnir’s writing pulled Maslany right into the project: “I was first just really drawn to the script. I find I’m often so focused on imagining a play in its final performed form, but this was such an engaging read, on its own.” Kushnir’s script was born of a deeply personal pursuit. After he published a eulogy in The Globe and Mail for his grandfather, a renowned watchmaker named Peter who passed away at 91 years of age, Kushnir encountered a troubling accusation in the comments. It propelled him on a 19, 000-kilometre journey across Ukraine and Europe, retracing his grandfather’s path as a soldier and immigrant. What he uncovered is less a tidy narrative than a complex, shifting inheritance: one that complicates ideas of identity, legacy, and memory itself.
But Maslany’s interest was complicated by the content: “I think I have a bit of a block up around how to engage with war stories—something so outside of my experiences. It feels impossible to understand it. Probably because it is.” Rather than attempting to resolve that feeling of distance, The Division leans into it: “This play is not a history lesson. It engages with history to bring it into the now in a really powerful and immediate way.”
The work’s title is emblematic of this approach. Kushnir’s grandfather, he discovers, had ties to the First Ukrainian Division (also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, 1st Galician) during the Second World War—a revelation that complicates the family story Kushnir thought he knew. The “division” of the work’s title speaks not only to this military history, but to the fractures it creates across generations: between past and present, memory and myth, pride and reckoning. As Kushnir retraces his grandfather’s path across Europe with the timepiece he inherited, the play becomes an excavation of how personal narratives are shaped, defended, and sometimes shifted by what resurfaces.
Onstage, that investigation unfolds through Kushnir’s signature blend of documentary theatre and storytelling, incorporating verbatim text alongside dramatized material. For Maslany, this has been “such a unique experience playing someone who has lived what you’re performing, and who is allowing you to perform their words.” In a sense, Kushnir is the ultimate actor’s resource: “It’s been invaluable to be able to ask Andrew specific questions about his story—and to have the information straight from the source.”
While this dynamic could lead to inflexibility, but Maslany has experienced the opposite: “Andrew is not only open about the elements of his life that we’re showing in the play, he’s also very open to collaboration and allowing all of us to interpret these characters in our own way.” Rather than aiming for strict replication, Kushnir directs “as a response to the material he’s collected and written, and never as a strict re-enactment of events.” Watching him hold his experience, his art, and his craft in tension, Maslany marvels that “It’s been amazing seeing him navigate all of it.”
The production brings together a cast adept at shifting between roles and perspectives, including Karl Ang, Ivy Charles, Mariya Khomutova, and Alon Nashman. Maslany (whom audiences may recognize from stage work such as Things I Know to Be True, and screen roles including Murdoch Mysteries) knows this firsthand because he spends much of the piece observing the story as it unfolds around him: “The way they are all juggling so many characters that weave in and out of the story is an athletic feat. I love getting to witness all of that.”
This sense of witnessing extends to the audience, as well. The use of verbatim text, drawn directly from real voices, creates a particular kind of engagement.“I think you automatically engage differently when you know something is a true story—and even more so, when it’s using verbatim text,” Maslany observes. “The verbatim text included in this piece is so rich with subtleties and playable hiccups that would be really hard to capture through traditional writing.” The polish lies in the selection, not in any revision: “The raw edges and messiness of some of the text that Andrew has included reminds you that these real people were sorting through their own conflicting thoughts on the subject matter. It’s not sanitized, and it’s not tidy.”
In a reflective moment, Maslany points to Kushnir’s earlier documentary work as a touchstone. “I remember being so moved by the performances and docu-style of Andrew’s play Towards Youth. I felt like I really knew the people being depicted.” What carries through into The Division is a form that is equally evidentiary—but also theatrical. “There’s something really powerful and immediate about it being both a live experience in a room with people and also a documentary.”
There’s also something deeply and importantly relevant about the work because The Division excavates the past with a clear eye on the now. “The themes that this play is grappling with are completely applicable to our present day wars around the world,” Maslany notes. But in a media landscape saturated with distant conflict, the play offers a helpfully different mode of encounter: “We’re taking in so much unfathomable news on a daily basis—it’s easy to become numb to it. I think considering some of the questions of the play can allow us to see our place within it all.”
The Division runs April 21 to May 10, 2026 (opening April 23) in the Studio at Crow’s Theatre. Tickets and more information are available at crowstheatre.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
