Face It! Theatre Company welcomed audiences back with its first production since 2019 this November, “In the Garden of Z,” a story of a young Russian woman struggling to find truth in her country and identity.

The show ran from Nov. 1 to Nov. 10 with shows on Fridays and the weekends at the First Congregational Church in Binghamton. Face It! Theatre Company is a nonprofit, local traveling production company in Greater Binghamton that brings together high school and college students, community members and professional actors to put on conversation-invoking productions.

Written by Sean and Jelizaveta Robinson, “In the Garden of Z” dives deep into the media of Russia today. Jelizaveta Robinson found inspiration after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She was shocked to learn that her friends and family in Russia were not as horrified as she was to learn about the war and took years of research to put together this piece of work.

The play focuses on Sabina, the main character and a young girl living in modern-day Russia. She reads the writings left behind by two young women, Agnessa and Polina, who lived through Stalin’s rule of the Soviet Union. Their stories are shared by Sabina as she learns about her country’s history while refusing to buy into the mass amounts of Russian propaganda.

When asked about what this production has meant to her, Alexandra Blum, the actress playing Sabina and a senior majoring in theatre, shared that the production gave her a sense of hope for the future of these worldly conflicts and how written art forms can assist in spreading messages of hope.

“The fact that people are writing stories about this, writing plays, because they believe it’s an important story to tell,” Blum said. “It gives me hope that people’s minds are gonna change and that they’re gonna learn and that we can move forward and everything will be better.”

The production had a focus on women’s voices with an all-female cast. Each of the characters explores various themes, including the impacts that their surrounding environment has on them. From the clashing familial relationships, to love, loss and the hope that difficult times will subside, many aspects of womanhood were explored with each individual character.

Kaitlyn Sorenson, an assistant professor of comparative literature and the department’s undergraduate director, attended the show and shared her thoughts on the importance of feminine voices in the production.

“I think one of the things that really strikes me about this play is the fact that we are perhaps a little bit prepared, typically, to expect these kinds of narratives of nationalism to be articulated through male-identifying voices,” Sorenson said. “And here we don’t have that, right? We have this not portrayed as a problem of male impotence or sexuality, but in fact, often glanced through female sexuality in a very interesting way.”

The production consisted of passionate monologues that were equally impressive and full of substance. One of the most notable came from Dana Malikova-Buralkiyeva, the actress playing Olga, a Russian journalist, whose primary job is to spread Russian propaganda.

In her monologue, Olga reveals that she’s aware of the false narratives she is spreading and acknowledges the Russian people’s desire to believe what they are hearing. When asked about her feelings on the monologue in a talk following the play, Malikova-Buralkiyeva shared her thoughts on propaganda and her experience as a first-year graduate student studying political science.

“Basically my current work in academia, it’s about freedom of speech and propaganda,” Malikova-Buralkiyeva said. “Basically, just to be honest, back in Kazakhstan, I [was] doing a lot of training sessions for different ages of people about propaganda, about freedom of expression, about how can you actually understand when they lie to you.”

“In the Garden of Z” captivated the audience and brought the community together to share stories of hope and optimism for the future of our world. By using theater as a vessel for knowledge of the state of Russia, the writers and cast were able to portray real stories beautifully.