A U.S. premiere, the comedy-mystery embraces the positive feminist power of the witch archetype.
Behind a rickety fence gilded with human skulls, she lives in a ramshackle, ever-spinning cottage propped up on enormous arching chicken legs. She wields immense power over animals, the elements, and time itself, flying through the air with the aid of a giant mortar and pestle.
She is the Baba Yaga, a Slavic mythological figure once described as a hideous, child-eating witch but revered by some as a guardian of nature, forests, lost adventurers, and women.
This week, The Baba Yaga’s magic will descend on Mill Valley’s Marin Theatre, kicking off its eclectic 2024/2025 season with Canadian playwright Kat Sandler’s “Yaga,” running Oct. 10 through Nov. 3. Described as a dark comedic fairytale presented as a true crime mystery, the play—which debuted in Toronto in early 2020—features a cop (Rachel Clausen) and a detective (Adam KuveNiemann) methodically investigating the disappearance of a 20-something yogurt dynasty heir. The director of the show is Barbara Damashek, a 1985 Tony nominee for the writing and direction on the Broadway musical ‘Quilters.”
“I think the audience is going to find this show really enjoyable, watching three actors play a total of 14 characters,” says actor Julie McNeal, who plays six of those characters – including Baba Yaga herself. “To play Yaga,” she teases, “I have to tap into a little bit of her magic, her ancient conjuring power – so that’s been very exciting.”
After weeks of work—on the first day of run-throughs of the play’s elaborate light, sound, lighting-fast costume changes and other technical details—McNeal admits her voice is sounding a bit rougher than normal, after long hours of rehearsal in the previous days. Displaying exceptional caution in talking about “Yaga,” McNeal is careful not to reveal too much about what promises to be a twisty, surprise-packed play, and one she feels has loads of meaning and emotional depth.
“For research, we all got into this book of short stories, called ‘Into the Forest,’ with a bunch of female writers and horror writers, and there’s a lot of Baba Yaga in those stories,” she said. “The first story in the book, “Last Tour into the Hungering Moonlight” by Gwendolyn Kiste, really raises the feel of the play for me, which is this fact that deep magic is present all the time, no matter where we are. We are busy with buying gas, or getting our kids to school, while some part of us knows that there is some deep magic available just down the way, just down the path. This play invites us into that fact, for sure.
“And,” she adds, “it’s also just incredibly clever and funny. ‘Yaga’ is a mystery, after all, all about witty banter and following clues. There might be ancient justice driving the plot, but the playwright is brilliantly smart. There is so much for the audience to be engaged with. It’s a beautifully written play.”
Lance Gardner, Marin Theatre’s Artistic Director since October of 2023, shares McNeal’s enthusiasm for “Yaga.”
“I’m excited to share something new and unknown to our audiences,” he says, noting that the production marks the play’s U.S. premiere.
“This is a show by a Canadian playwright that’s been produced twice in Canada, but never in the United States, until now,” Gardner says. “When I was planning the season, looking for plays that are new to me and new to the Bay Area – but not necessarily a brand-new play—I thought that, probably, very few people were looking at Canada. A lot of great art and culture comes out of Canada.”
The first time he read “Yaga,” he says, he was so impressed that he decided, by the time he reached the final page, to add the show to this year’s season, his first full season as AD.
Asked if putting the 2024/2025 season was about finding five plays that fit together in some way, or work to tell a larger story or celebrate the visions of a particular category of playwright, Gardner says that for him, it’s all about just finding five great plays.
“If that means they have no apparent relationship to each other, that’s all right,” he says, “but I do pay attention to themes and balance.” The plays he was drawn to while planning this season just happened to have in common with the power or disempowerment of women.
“They either had a feminist edge,” he says, “or told an important female story that we all felt was important for our time and place.”
The other shows in the season begin in the new year with Harley Granville-Barker’s sprawling 1907 political drama “Waste,” banned in Edwardian England for its themes of religious hypocrisy, sex, abortion, suicide and political corruption (February 6 – March 2, 2025). It will be followed by “Mrs. Krishnan’s Party” (March 19-30), by Jacob Rajan and Justin Lewis.
Designed as an interactive theatrical experience, the play—about the South Indian proprietor of a New Zealand convenience store where an elaborate harvest festival party is about to take place—was created by the New Zealand theater company India Ink. Audience members will choose from four different seating arrangements, according to how involved they want to be in the party.
From April 16-May 4, Marin Theatre will present Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens’ “It’s True, It’s True, It’s True,” another U.S. premiere. Based on a historical courtroom drama from 1612 Renaissance Rome, the play examines the sensational sexual assault accusation of 17-year-old painter Artemisia Genteleschi against Italian seascape painter Agostino Tassi.
The season will conclude with the Bay Area premiere of Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s “Do You Feel Anger” (June 5-29), described as a “hilarious dark comedy about modern workplace culture,” following a newly hired “empathy coach” named Sofia at a dysfunctional debt collection agency.
“I don’t think anyone expected the plays I chose to bring this season,” Gardner says. “And I think they will be delighted.”
As for “Yaga,” Gardner recognizes that the play fits neatly into the fascinating current cultural interest in witches, as powerful and potentially dangerous, but ultimately wronged, figures whose magic is inseparable from their existence as women. From “Wicked” to “Agatha All Along,” witches are suddenly a thing again, and generally a positive thing.
“I think that the character of the witch has been wielded against women for so long that we’ve reached a point in the history of feminism,” he says, “that it’s time for women to claim that archetype for themselves and turn the table on the story. Much in the same way that queer communities, and Black communities and other groups of people who’ve been undermined and oppressed have reclaimed language and stereotypes about them, it’s clearly time for women to reclaim the archetype of the witch. Kat Sandler’s “Yaga” does exactly that, in a beautiful and entertaining and extremely exciting way.
The sense that a reclaimed feminine power is calling the shots in this play is an idea that McNeal has come to embrace wholly. As written, KuveNiemann, a man, embodies two of the play’s 14 characters, leaving McNeal and Clausen to divvy up the rest.
“We each play characters in service of framing the stages of being a woman – the maiden, the mother, the crone,” she says. “But this play holds that in a much larger context. It’s not just how our society might view those three roles of women. But we all play different roles in our lives.”
This brings her back to the excitement of playing so many characters in a single show.
“I think the audience gets a kind of titillating experience,” she says, “knowing more than the characters do in each new scene, recognizing that the same person that just played someone else is now playing this new character.”
All of those character switches, while a huge challenge for a performer, are not a test of acting ability alone, McNeal points out. The backstage folks who assist with the show’s many quick changes are a big part of making all that magic possible. To honor their contributions, McNeal says, they will come out with the actors to take the final curtain call at the end of the play.
“It’s just the right thing to do,” she says. “Without them, we could not do this, for real. They are part of the magic as much as the rest of us. The magic in this show is a group effort because, let’s face it, the best, most powerful magic is always a group effort.”
Marin Theatre’s “Yaga” opens for previews on Thursday, Oct. 10, will premiere on Tuesday, October 15, and will run through Sunday, November 3. For showtimes, prices, and special events, visit MarinTheatre.org.
