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Philadelphia-based theater company The Wilma Theater continues its 2023-24 season with the world premiere presentation of My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion by Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova. Presented as a co-production between The Wilma and Washington, DC-based Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the play is an irreverently funny and heartfelt look at the current war in Ukraine told through Denisova’s family story. My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion is directed by The Wilma’s Co Artistic Director Yury Urnov and features a cast of award-winning actors Holly Twyford, Wilma HotHouse Company member Suli Holum, and fellow Wilma Co-Artistic Director Lindsay Smiling. The play runs from January 30 to February 18, with 20 performances presented in The Wilma’s 300-seat theater.
The Wilma and Woolly Mammoth collaborated on My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion’s world premiere, presenting the production with the same cast and crew on their respective stages for the 2023-24 season. My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion kicked off Woolly Mammoth’s 2023-24 season and ran from September 11 to October 8. The play was met with rave reviews, hailed by The Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks as “ingenious” and “a stunning tale of love, loyalty, and resilience” by Broadway World. After a successful run in D.C., the production’s cast and creative team prepare to continue telling the inspiring story about the resistance of one octogenarian for The Wilma’s audiences.
My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion centers on Denisova’s 82-year-old mama, Olga (Twyford), who has lived in Kyiv her whole life. When Russia invades Ukraine in 2022, Sasha (Holum) copes with her fears by imagining her mother in increasingly fantastical situations: strategizing with President Zelenskyy, meeting with world leaders, taking out Russian drones with jars of pickles, and even debating with God. Throughout the play, Sasha reveals layers of her and her mother’s relationship, offering a window into their lives that is simultaneously revealing and endearing. Denisova was inspired by her online chats with her mother to write this defiantly funny and deeply heartfelt play about her family’s connection and legacy amidst the present-day war and global crisis. In centering herself and her mother in the play, Denisova provides an emotionally resonant heartbeat to humanize the Ukrainian resistance for audiences separated from the war by an entire hemisphere.
“Every day of this criminal and cruel invasion of Ukraine, I feel a desperate need to respond to it,” said Urnov. “Now, when the focus is shifting away from the region, the need feels even more urgent. The Washington Post named Denisova as a leading dramatic voice on Putin’s tragic war’ for a reason – her play is a treasure both politically and artistically, despite those two rarely walking hand in hand. Through telling an extremely personal, emotional, and often funny story about her own mom, Denisova grasps the very nature of Ukrainian resistance. My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion tells facts and gives hope.”
Sasha Denisova is a Ukrainian playwright, director, and writer. Born in Kyiv, she makes sharply social, political theater in which documentary material merges with magical and fantastical. Denisova graduated from the Philology Department of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv before subsequently studying and working at various theater companies in Russia. She studied documentary theater at the Theater Doc company in Moscow, trained at the Royal Court in London, and graduated from the School of a Theater Leader at the Moscow Art Theatre School. Denisova went on to serve as Deputy Artistic Director at the Meyerhold Center in Moscow and, in 2012, received Russia’s highest theatre prize, The Golden Mask.
Immediately after the full-scale war in Ukraine broke out, Denisova fled Moscow for Poland. At the same time, all her ongoing productions in Russia were shut down. Since then, she has been a leading voice on the conflict in the global theater community, writing and staging four plays about Russia’s invasion. This includes Six Ribs of Anger at Kommuna Warszawa in Poland, a first reading of My Mom and the Full Scale Invasion at the CCCV Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Spain, The Hague at the Polish Theater in Poznan, Poland, Arlekin Players Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, and Sofia’s National Theater in Bulgaria, and Bakhmut.
The world premiere production of My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion features Washington D.C. theater legend Holly Twyford as the titular mama, with Wilma HotHouse Company member Suli Holumn as Sasha. Lindsay Smiling is deceptively credited as “Man” but portrays multiple characters such as French President Emmanuel Macron and German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz through costume changes and advanced A.I. technology.
Wilma Co-Artistic Director Yury Urnov directs the co-production of My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion. Born in Moscow, Russia, Urnov graduated from the Russian Academy of Theater Art in 2000, and has lived and worked in the United States since 2009. Woolly Mammoth was his first artistic home in America, joining as company member in 2014 and directed its productions of You for Me for You (2012), Marie Antoinette (2014), and KISS (2016). In addition to serving as Co-Artistic Director at The Wilma, Urnov also directed the theater’s productions of Mr. Burns (2018), Minor Character (2021), and Twelfth Night (2023).
Urnov leads a production team featuring Assistant Director Fatima Dyfan, Scenic Designer Misha Kachman, Associate Scenic Designer Margarita Syrocheva, Costume Designer Ivania Stack, Associate Costume Designer Kitt Crescenzo, Lighting Designer Venus Gulbranson, Associate Lighting Designer Dean Leong, Sound Designer and Composer Michael Kiley, Projection Designer Kelly Colburn, Associate Projection Designer Dylan Uremovich, Co-Dramaturgs Sonia Fernandez and Kellie Mecleary, Stage Manager Becky Reed, Rehearsal Assistant Stage Manager Jazzy Davis, Performance Assistant Stage Manager Miranda. Korieth, and Understudy Casting Chelsea Radigan. The play is translated by Misha Kachman and adapted by Kellie Mecleary.
Preview performances for My Mama and The Full-Scale Invasion are from Tuesday, January 30, through Thursday, February 1. The production opens with an invite-only performance on Friday, February 2, at 7p.m. and runs through Sunday, February 18. Single Digital Tickets will be available for sale toward the end of the show’s in-person run. Tickets start at $29 and can be purchased at http://www.wilmatheater.org or by calling the Wilma’s box office at 215-546-7824.
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