Karl Ang, Ivy Charles, Daniel Maslany, Mariya Khomutova & Alon Nashman in The Division | Photo by Dahlia Katz
An untenable aspect that corrodes some forms of activism, and popular opinion generally, is the attitude that individuals or communities must be wholly unimpeachable to deserve our empathy or support. Complexity and nuance are either disregarded or wielded as markers of insufficient human purity. Presented by Project: Humanity and Pyretic Productions in association with Crow’s Theatre, The Division, written and directed by Andrew Kushnir, is persistently curious in its embrace of complexity and nuance. It is a rigorous, attentive and moving tribute to a man and a culture.
After the death of his grandfather, a Ukrainian watchmaker, inspires him to publish a eulogy in The Globe and Mail, a random comment throws his relationship to this patriarch, and his own worldview, into question—sending him on a journey to investigate his dido’s history and interrogate notions of integrity and legacy.
Kushnir has given this an intimate, meta-theatrical framing. It opens with Daniel Maslany, portraying Kushnir himself, giving voice to a letter he’s writing to an eight-year-old nephew, Lev—but a future version of him, well on his way to adulthood. His intention is to pass along, before they mutate into something unrecognizable or dissipate entirely, the memory of his grandfather and, more broadly, Ukrainian identity.
His grandfather, a gruff yet loving man and an expert craftsman, was always the dominant personality in any room. Much of the play is an affectionate rendering of him. The titular division (though there is layered meaning there) refers to a military outfit he was part of in his late teens, during the Second World War. That comment on Kushnir’s piece for The Globe, while not cruel or derogatory, does prompt him to examine the actions of that unit and, ultimately, his grandfather’s ethics. The division, Kushnir is distressed to learn, had ties to Nazism.
This piece of verbatim theatre is both whimsical and sobering. Having recorded many conversations throughout this investigative journey, these archived moments have exploded out into the flesh through Maslany and the rest of the ensemble—Karl Ang, Ivy Charles, Mariya Khomutova and Alon Nashman—who embody an array of people he encounters, both in real life and through historical paraphernalia.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the contemporary context that looms over his uncovering of fraught family history. The possibility that his grandfather engaged in atrocities, while never diminishing his devotion, does tarnish the pristine impression he grew up with. He encounters push back in his quest from stakeholders who interpret his line of inquiry as undermining Ukraine as an entity worth valuing and protecting. Though very much rattled by the information he’s gathering, both solid and speculative, he is unflinching in his pursuit. That inquisitive and loving energy is infectious.
Kushnir employs some playful theatrics that further our immersion within the cloistered intimacy of the Studio space. Feeling like a deliberate homage to his previous ode to Ukraine, the far more harrowing Bad Roads, he has performers clasp found domestic objects, like dishes and table lamps, to mime a car ride through bumpy landscape. And I have to shout-out a hilariously blunt, eerily perfect technique this team employs to transform Nashman into Putin—a truly inspired and bizarrely accurate bit of clowning!
Sim Suzer’s set offers a quaint, mundane backdrop of wood panelling and vertical blinds that give this whole affair a deeply familiar, comfortable domesticity. All of the grand notions of culture and legacy are grounded by these homey textures. Christian Horoszczak’s lighting sometimes supports this cozy ambiance, but frequently saturates the space in colour and carves out shapes to suggest a variety of settings, giving this experience a stylized, mythic dimension.
Throughout, Maslany-Kushnir brandishes an antique watch of his grandfather’s design and construction. He places this cherished object into the hands of the people he encounters, each time taking a photo of it in each new context. This form of documentation is familiar, of course, whipping out our phones to capture the specificity of a moment, but it also feels a bit strange when you unpack the intention here. Especially loaded is the photo he takes of the watch outside the gates of Auschwitz. He acknowledges, but can’t quite unpack, his compulsion to juxtapose this token of his grandfather’s complicated legacy with this famous memorial to our human capacity for evil.
That same tension exists in my favourite scene of The Division. The longest single sequence, it is a meditative moment of deep poignancy as Kushnir is invited into the home of an elderly Polish couple living in a small UK village—an obscure little place his grandfather inhabited during his wartime enlistment. Funny, awkward, sweet and full of unspoken history—this precious and haunting encounter is teeming with unspoken pain and gentle kindness. Kushnir has such faith in our ability to parse the layered dimensions of this subtle, exquisitely rendered episode.
In retrospect, I am struck by the symbolic weight of that dangling timepiece. Existing as both a personal artifact and a clichéd instrument of hypnotic purpose, it’s a clever device. But even calling it “clever” feels dismissive when considering the emotive power of this production.
The Division
April 21 to May 17, 2026
Streetcar Crowsnest, Studio Theatre
(345 Carlaw Avenue)
1 hours, 30 minutes (no intermission)
Karl Ang & Daniel Maslany in The Division | Photo by Dahlia Katz