CULTURE CROSSROADS // WHO HAS BEEN EATING MY BARSZCZ?
What We Preserve
Notes on culture, crossroads, and My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion
by Joanna Nowak
EXCERPT //
I remember how barszcz, stained red from fermented beetroot, is carefully doled out over peppery uszka (ears). My sister and I carry shallow soup bowls, filled to the lip, to our kitchen table—“Careful, don’t spill,” Mama gently instructs, “and be careful with the tablecloth.” It’s crisp white, laundered days before and perfectly starched and ironed by Mama. Its nemesis, the star of the holiday, is the red barszcz—a full family effort: beets procured, and soured, by Mama; cooked and seasoned, and generously peppered, by Babcia (Grandmother) and Tata (Dad); taste-tested by Sissy and me. Christmas Eve is the culmination of a four-day-long preparation and a beloved act of cultural preservation.
***
Sasha Denisova’s play, My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion, is the story of her 82-year-old mother, who refuses to leave her lifelong home in Kyiv, Ukraine, when Russia invades in 2022. It was co-produced with the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and premiered at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater this winter, directed by Yury Urnov. Inspired by WhatsApp messages between mother and daughter, Denisova introduces the audience to her (sometimes less than maternal) Mama, a socialite-architect-turned-patriot who survives the invasion through ever-more fantastic and absurd means. Along the way, she meets—and sometimes berates—Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, U.S. President Joseph Biden, an alien, and God himself.
A jar of pickles features prominently.
The pickles sit on the top shelf full of preserved fruits and vegetables, but are lowest on the rung, beneath the treasured cherry preserves, and are a suitable weapon against Russian drones that buzz through the skies of occupied Kyiv. Fermented foods are part of the detailed and purposeful stage design of Misha Kachman, who also translated the play. Kachman, Denisova says, “bought actual Ukrainian pickles, so that’s as close to documentary as possible. And, in the first stages, his wife was actually cooking the stuffed peppers—so that was authentic.” Elsewhere in Mama’s house: An ancient television set (perhaps the first color model) sits near carefully pruned houseplants; an ornate wall clock hangs in the kitchen; an imported Polish display cabinet (barely) stands, full of carefully selected objects; a tiny mid-century refrigerator, unlike the American Viking; delicate lace curtains, small sepia photographs in wooden frames.
The exterior of Mama’s home is in the brutalist architecture style, prevalent during the mid-century in the Eastern Bloc. It’s open on all sides and rotates throughout the play to show Mama from different perspectives: inside taking Zoom calls with world leaders; making her stuffed peppers; engaging with her love (the character of “Man” in the play); on the balcony smoking, yelling, and fighting drones with projectile pickled foods; on the roof arguing with God. “We’re trying to be as specific and true to reality as possible within the pavilion of the house. ... We start with Mama sort of preserved within this capsule, within this pod,” Urnov explains.
Inside and out, the set is representative of Denisova’s Ukrainian heritage, her own culture preserved: “The Polish unit, the Czech crystal, the clock looted by Grandpa in Berlin … it has these connections through … the city of Odesa where you can only buy this particular fish.” //
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