About the Play:

Winner of the 2008 Victoria Critics' Spotlight award for Best New Play

My Chernobyl is a full-length comedy by Aaron Bushkowsky. A naive Canadian man travels to Belarus to give an inheritance to his father's last remaining relative. While there, he meets his long-lost cousin, a beautiful, young Russian woman, who sets her sights on her wealthy relative as a ticket out of the radiation-blasted country.

My Chernobyl is a quirky romance set in the existential old country, where cultures and ideals clash with touching and hilarious results. A lonely Canadian man named David reluctantly travels to a village in Belarus irradiated by the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to hand over an inheritance to a distant relative as stipulated in his father's will. Unemployed at home, he still shows up in Eastern Europe with plenty of U.S. dollars only to find out the heir is dead, thus the inheritance reverts to David. He is squeezed for every buck by an old farmer, Yuri, and a depressed mechanic, Katrina, while his Belarussian cousin, Natasha, starts to angle for wealth through marriage, plus easy immigration to David's less toxic homeland.

My Chernobyl received its world premiere in March 2008 at Richmond's Gateway Theatre before moving to the Belfry in Victoria. The play was nominated for nine Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards and led all Vancouver productions.

Cast: 2 women, 3 men

What people say:

"My Chernobyl is one of the standout shows of the season. Your best bet for smart, cynical theatre, My Chernobyl gets a glowing recommendation." — The Vancouver Sun

"If Gogol had been Canadian, he might have written something like My Chernobyl. I'm still smiling. This is one smart and funny script ... You never know which way Bushkowsky is going to go: serious, political or comedic." — The Vancouver Courier

"A Canadian innocent experiences the bleakness of post-Communist, post-Chernobyl Eastern Europe and the gentle absurdism of Chekhov." — The Vancouver Province

"My Chernobyl repeatedly surprised me into laughter — and challenged me to think seriously about why I had laughed… splendidly original work…." — The Georgia Straight

About the Author:

Aaron Bushkowsky is an award-winning Canadian playwright and author of collections of poetry, prose and screenplays. He holds a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia (UBC), and teaches writing at Playwrights' Theatre Centre, Langara College's Studio 58, and the Vancouver Film School.