“Mother Russia” Finds a Home at Seattle Rep

You might assume that Lauren Yee is a Seattle playwright. Since 2010, local theatre companies, small and large, have lined up to produce her work—from SIS Productions’ staging of Ching Chong Chinaman at the Richard Hugo House in 2010 to the world premiere of King of the Yees at ACT Theatre in 2017, to The Great Leap at Seattle Rep a year later, and Cambodian Rock Band at ACT Theatre in 2023, a co-production with The 5th Avenue Theatre.

“In a way, Seattle feels like an artistic home for me, even though I’ve never lived there,” said Yee during a phone interview from her home in New York City. “A lot of different Seattle theatre makers, past and present, have supported me and been a big part of my artistic life.”

Yee returns to town in March with Seattle Rep’s world premiere production of the quirky and provocative comedy Mother Russia. Euvgeny and Dmitri are two young men living in St. Petersburg, Russia, and looking forward to simple lives holding comfortable government jobs circa 1992. Instead, the pair navigate a new reality, thanks to the fall of Russia and the collapse of communism, that favors free market capitalism over government strongmen. Add to the mix Katya, an alluring former pop star with a secret agenda, and the result is a political farce involving a love triangle, mistaken identities, and slapdash espionage.

“It’s a play with big political themes that make you think, but it’s also wrapped in the ridiculousness of these three people’s lives,” explained Yee, who was born and raised in San Francisco, earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale, majoring in English and Theatre Arts, and a Master of Fine Arts in playwrighting from the University of California, San Diego. “Compared to some of my other plays that have debuted in Seattle, which I would describe as very funny dramas with a certain lightness and humor, Mother Russia is much more of a heightened farce.”

“It’s a very smart comedy,” said Seattle Rep Artistic Director Dámaso Rodríguez. “Comedy is the hook or the vehicle for Lauren to explore some really big themes without being too heavy.”

Russia seems an unusual setting for a playwright most known for writing plays with strong connections to Asia. Cambodian Rock Band weaved together a young Cambodian American woman, her father who survived the Khmer Rouge, and surf rock. Inspired by her father’s short-lived basketball career, The Great Leap followed a Chinese American college basketball player’s trip to Beijing for a “friendly” game during China’s post-Cultural Revolution. But Yee sees a common thread between these plays and Mother Russia.

“One thing I’ve noticed, and I don’t think I was even aware of as it was happening, is that I’ve been writing a play cycle about communism throughout the 20th Century,” she explained. “I feel like my exploration into this collision between communism and Western pop culture is a strange, backward way of exploring Americanism and what it is to see our culture through another lens.”

Yee started writing Mother Russia while attending the Colorado New Play Festival in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in 2017. She began the weeklong residency writing a serious spy thriller involving surveillance, hidden agendas, and other familiar tropes but soon gravitated toward comedy. “Understanding that tonal shift was so helpful in discovering what the play was,” she said. “The lightness and energy, the goofy fun we get to have with these characters in this work, that has been the heart of the play.”

The La Jolla Playhouse was ready to stage Mother Russia’s world premiere in September 2020, but the pandemic shut down public performances. It was rescheduled for April 2022 but pulled by the theatre company due to concerns over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a month earlier.

“Looking back at the long, winding history this play had, it finally feels like I understand the play in a way I don’t think I would have five years ago,” she said. According to Yee, that period allowed her to dig deeper into the history, further explore the themes of political and societal collapse, and think about what rises in the wake of those events. “In a satisfying way, it feels like I’ve finally been able to figure out the play.”

Rodríguez has a close connection to the play. Five years ago, when he was the artistic director of the Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Oregon, the company was slated to produce Mother Russia after its La Jolla Playhouse world premiere but was also cancelled by the pandemic. “I have a PDF of the brochure from that season, which never saw the light of day,” he said. “I’ve had the play in my pocket for five years.” When he was hired by Seattle Rep during the summer of 2023, he thought of Yee’s play. When he learned it was unproduced, Rodríguez put it on a shortlist of possibilities for an upcoming season. “There was just this moment, it was a little bit fated,” he said. “I love the play. Seattle Rep has a history with Lauren. Her work is popular in Seattle, and we have the chance to do a world premiere Lauren Yee play.”

“All the pieces came together in a really positive way,” Yee added. “Seattle gets to be the home to do this play for the first time, which I’m really excited about.”