Cast Set For the North American Premiere Of Natal'ya Vorozhbit's BAD ROADS

In the Donbas region of Ukraine, a war is raging, and people want to understand why. Based on astonishing testimonies from the outset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, BAD ROADS explores the heartbreaking effects of conflict on intimate relationships and a country's social fabric.
 
Ukrainian playwright Natal'ya Vorozhbit deftly intertwines themes of love, sex, trauma, loss, and resistance through powerful and darkly comic episodes exploring, most of all, of what it is to be a woman in wartime.
 
Ukrainian Canadian Andrew Kushnir is an award-winning playwright, director, activist, and artistic director of the socially engaged theatre company Project: Humanity, a leading developer of verbatim theatre in Canada including Towards Youth: a play on radical hope, and Freedom Singer at Crow's Theatre. His production of Casey and Diana at the Stratford Festival was named “the most moving play of 2023” by the Toronto Star.
 
“Bad Roads feels like more than a play – it's a kind of portal” explains director Andrew Kushnir. “How do we, in our part of the world, connect beyond the headlines of the past 19 months? Sometimes it takes a piece of theatre to help us grasp the complexity of a place, its people, its struggle, its mysteries, and riddles. Just showing up to experience this deeply humane play is a remarkable act of solidarity.” 
 
Brilliantly bringing the stories to life are a powerhouse company of actors including, Andrew Chown (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Crow's Theatre; Shakespeare in Love, Citadel Theatre), Katherine Gauthier (Five seasons at Shaw Festival; A Doll's House, Soulpepper), Craig Lauzon, (The Darkest Dark, Young People's Theatre; Detroit, Coal Mine Theatre), Diego Matamoros (Founding member of the Soulpepper Theatre Company; Earl of Gloucester in King Lear, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, England),  Seana McKenna (30 seasons at the Stratford Festival; Things I Know To Be True, David Mirvish/The Company Theatre), Michelle Monteith (The Seagull, Soulpepper; Public Enemy, Canadian Stage), and Shauna Thompson (Orphans for the Czar, Crow's Theatre; Prodigal, The Howland Company/Crow's Theatre).
 
The award-winning design team includes set and properties designer Sim Suzer, costume designer Snezana Pesic, Lighting Designer Christian Horoszczak, and Sound Designer Thomas Ryder Payne (The Master Plan, Crow's Theatre).
 
The leading Ukrainian playwright of her generation, “a Ukrainian Sarah Kane” (The Guardian), Natal'ya Vorozhbit premiered BAD ROADS at The Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2017, and wrote and directed the feature film version, Ukraine's official Oscar selection, in 2020. Since premiering in Kyiv in 2018, BAD ROADS has become an undeniable hit and an important representation of wartime life in Ukraine.
 

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