SICKLE: Minnesota Premiere Production, May 2025
Theatre Novi Most will present a full production of Sickle, by Abbey Fenbert, May 2-11, 2025 at Mixed Blood Theatre. Tickets available spring 2025.
About the show
1933. Four women, Halka, Anna, Irina and Yasia, attempt to survive at the height of the Holodomor* in their village in Ukraine. The men have already been deported as class traitors for resisting collectivization, and the women maintain discipline as best they can, guarding the land, foraging for food, while attempting not to die or go mad. Into their midst comes Nadya, a fresh-faced member of the Young Communist League, tasked with seeing to it that the party line is toed even if it kills every last villager. When she walks into a pastoral apocalypse, she begins to question everything she believes about the world. Although about a dark history, the play exudes surreal humor and will feature live Ukrainian music.
*Holodomor is the Ukrainian word for the man-made famine orchestrated by the USSR against Ukraine from 1931-1933. Between 3 and 10 million Ukrainians died in this genocidal campaign.
Sickle ultimately celebrates a will to survive history and transcend attempts at genocide.
Featuring the talented cast of Serena Brook, Becca Hart, Tracey Maloney, Adelin Phelps, and Julia Valen.
Directed by Theatre Novi Most co-founders Lisa Channer and Vladimir Rovinsky, with dramaturgy by Wendy Weckwerth, technical direction by Zeb Hults, set design by Sarah Bahr, property design by Ursula Bowden, costume design by Andrea Gross, lighting design by Rob Perry, sound design by Dan Dukich, projection design by Davey Steinman, and musical direction by Johanna Gorman Baer. The production features live Ukrainian music from Olga Frayman and Johanna Gorman Baer.
About the playwright
Abbey Fenbert is a Chicago-based writer. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University and a BA from NYU. Her original plays have been produced and developed by the Matrix Theatre Company, Red Theatre Chicago, Northern Illinois University, the Great Plains Theatre Conference, Boston Playwrights' Theatre, the KNOW Theatre, the Berkshire Playwrights’ Lab, the Vagrancy, the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis and the Playwrights Union of Los Angeles. Her plays Sickle and Child were Finalists for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and her short dramatic works are published in anthologies from Smith & Kraus. Her writing has been featured online at The Toast, McSweeney’s, Catapult, The Offing, HowlRound and American Theatre. She also wrote and stars in the webseries Beck & Clem, a feminist time-travel comedy. Fenbert served in the Peace Corps, Ukraine, 2008-2011, where she worked as an English teacher and youth organizer. She is currently a news editor for The Kyiv Independent.
This production is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.