Seana McKenna travels from Stratford to Crow’s – on Bad Roads

Seana McKenna is currently performing in Crow’s Theatre’s North-American premiere of Ukrainian playwright Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s 2017 play Bad Roads, , which she created from interviews she conducted with Ukrainians in the early years of the Russo-Ukrainian War. The critically-acclaimed production, which is adroitly directed by Andrew Kushnir, and features exceptional sound and lighting design by Christian Horoszczak and Thomas Ryder Payne respectively, has been extended until December 3. The play predates Russia’s stalled full invasion of Ukraine by several years, but contextualizes the underlying conflict, which began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and metastasized with the 2021 invasion.  Set against a backdrop of  the ongoing war in Ukraine’s Donbas region between these two times , Bad Roads is a visceral exploration of love, trauma, and resilience. And Vorozhbit weaves these threads with a special focus on the female experience in war. 

McKenna’s remarkable career spans forty years, including more than thirty (nonconsecutive) years at the Stratford Festival. Known for her versatility and depth as an actor, she performs the dual roles of Woman 1 and Vasya’s Wife in Bad Roads. The two characters reveal the diverse impacts of war and offer unique lenses on the conflict, and for McKenna, the appeal was simple, if multi-layered: “I was drawn to the project as a whole, especially one helmed by director Andrew Kushnir. It was an opportunity to do a Ukrainian play never seen in North America, about a conflict that is continuing right now.” Mounting Bad Roads is more than just another production: it is a “chance to give Ukrainian culture, which faces the threat of erasure, a voice: as Andrew has said, that in itself is a gesture of solidarity.” And finally, having admired the work at Crow’s Theatre, she has wanted to work there for some time. When she found out who her other cast members were, “that was a tremendous bonus!” 

Though she may be best known for her work on theatrical classics, McKenna started out doing new work at theatres such as Blyth, 24th Street Theatre, and Toronto Workshop Productions: “In my first three years, only three of the fourteen plays I was in were published work: the rest were devised, verbatim or never-before-heard-or-seen works.”  And her career has taught her that, regardless of a play’s vintage, “the human needs are often the same”. So preparation is her universal prerequisite: “My approach always starts with the mantra: read the play, read the play, read the play. (If there is one, that is!) And with research: the world when the play was written, the world in which it is set, the writer’s other works, etc.”  Thanks to the rigour of preparation, she has come to find Shakespeare’s language “immensely liberating”, and to see that contemporary texts, despite their more familiar and ordinary-seeming vernacular, can present enormous challenges. 

Her roles in Bad Roads, she explains, highlight the war’s impact on older individuals and the insidious process of dehumanization that precedes actual armed conflict. “The roles themselves allow me to reveal the effect of war on older people: a grandmother who is raising her teenage granddaughter (played by Katharine Gauthier) alone, and desperately trying to ensure her physical and psychological survival through wartime.” Her other scene as Vasya’s Wife reveals the insidious “othering” that was operating long before the war: “She, a poor farmer, finds herself losing her compassion and turning to opportunism when she and her husband are confronted with a wealthy Western Ukrainian woman who has run over their chicken.”  This young woman, who is crying, becomes the representation of all that is corrupt about Western values, democracy and capitalism – in other words, she becomes the enemy . . .  at least until they hear a different, more arresting sound. “Yes, the last scene has a few chicken jokes… So, who could say ‘no thank you’?” McKenna smiles.

Bad Roads conjures the literal disrepair of the Donbas roads ravaged by war, as well as the horrific choices and circumstances that the Ukrainian and Russian people travelling them are confronting. It unfolds as six vignettes which dramatize the harrowing impact of war on personal lives and societal structures, and challenge the desensitization of many media reports. It opens with a powerful vignette featuring Michelle Monteith as a Ukrainian journalist who sets the stage for the war’s history and the play’s events. Addressing the audience directly, Monteith delivers a stunning and urgent monologue.

Another segment of the play focuses on two Ukrainian soldiers, portrayed by Shauna Thompson and Craig Lauzon. In a harrowing scene, they transport the body of Thompson’s lover, also a soldier, in their car’s trunk while enduring harsh winter conditions. In a separate vignette, Lauzon portrays a commander with an intense, intimidating presence, who uses his authority as a tool to oppress others. A particularly disturbing scene features Gauthier as a Ukrainian journalist who is captured, threatened and tortured by a Russian soldier, played by Andrew Chown. 

With the real war raging in Ukraine as a backdrop, McKenna is keenly aware of the play’s broader implications, and hopes that the audience “has the chance to stretch their empathic muscles and be drawn into the complexities and costs of this particular war. Of course, there are not only horrific casualties and physical trauma, but psychological harm that will last generations. Perpetrators, victims, survivors: this play looks at all their plights.”  

To balance the play’s emotional demands with her well-being, she credits Kushnir and Artistic Resilience Specialist Katey Wattam for creating a supportive environment. “First, my emotional and physical burden is nowhere near as heavy as that of my castmates – though being exposed to the content on a daily basis can have its own ‘weight’,” she acknowledges. “The content is compelling and repellent; the characters are admirable and despicable. In short, it exposes human beings “in extremis”. It exposes all of us, really, as I believe we are capable of many things that would shock us, if we were put into similar circumstances.” Because the content is so frequently “brutal”, she is grateful that Kushnir centred care in the creative process. Throughout the rehearsals and afterwards, Wattam was with the cast, providing support and counsel: “Her guidance about trauma, triggers, and the fact that sometimes our bodies don’t know it’s make-believe, along with Andrew’s direction, gave us a space in which we were safe to take risks.” 

Asked what lies ahead for her, she reveals that she will next direct Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for the Stratford Festival. After that lies a bend in the road…a period which she jokingly describes as joining “the ranks of the professionally uncommitted, i.e., the unemployed!” After a pause, she reconsiders with a smile: “Most probably, you will see me in some audience!” 

In the meantime, audiences can catch McKenna as part of Crow’s outstanding production of Bad Roads until December 3. Visit crowstheatre.com for audience advisory and to reserve tickets.

© Arpita Ghosal, Sesayarts Magazine, 2023