SpaceBridge is a show starring Russian refugee children living in New York City shelters after fleeing Russia because of their families’ opposition to the invasion of Ukraine. It is also something of a social program for these children, ages 10 to 15, who have been meeting together in workshops with director Irina Kruzhilina for more than a year, sharing their stories and processing their feelings. And it’s a friendship mission, with Russian-born and American-born kids performing together; the title was the name of a series of TV programs via satellite during the Cold War that connected U.S. and Soviet audiences.
SpaceBridge is also (depending on your politics) a plea, or propaganda; a work of civic education or advocacy. There are scenes that criticize anti-Russian and anti-immigrant attitudes in the U.S., illustrated by videos of politicians’ speeches and projections of social media posts. One extensive scene uses puppets as immigration judges to detail the dysfunction of the asylum system, which segues into a scene in which the American cast members one by one read letters of support on behalf of the individual Russians in the cast seeking asylum.
All of that is a lot for a 95-minute production, presented from January 7 to 11 as part of the Under the Radar festival. And I didn’t even mention the mock TV cooking show segment, or the song-and-dance number, or the adult actress, Ellen Lauren, who portrays a long-dead child named Samantha Smith.
In 1982, Lauren as Samantha tells us in the first of the ten “chapters” of SpaceBridge, ten-year-old Samantha wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov, the leader of the Soviet Union, asking him whether he wanted a nuclear war. Also: “Why do you want to conquer the world or at least our country?” (We see a projection of the actual letter as Lauren reads it aloud.) Andropov wrote back (again we see his letter) saying he didn’t want war, and inviting Samantha and her parents to visit the Soviet Union. Her much-publicized visit turned her into a celebrity, dubbed America’s Youngest Ambassador. (She even became one of the stars on a network TV sitcom.)
“If I were still alive, I would be fifty-three years old,” Lauren as Samantha tells us, among the first spoken words in the show (we aren’t told until the very end that she died in a plane crash at age 13.) Samantha becomes more or less the narrator and central character throughout SpaceBridge; not exactly a twee choice, but an odd one. This was probably intended as one of the devices to help us navigate through an ambitious show crowded with 19 children, each with a story to tell.
Another such effort: The children each take turns narrating a story – which was crafted and consolidated from their own actual experiences — about a single fictional family’s taxing and convoluted trip from Russia to New York, by way of Turkey and Mexico. Accompanied by the written text projected on a map of the journey, they recount the long waits, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the bureaucracy, but also the novelty and the adventure. Their account is interspersed with Samantha looking at a newspaper and reading news items from Russia, some of them atrocities, all of them implicitly justifying the difficult exodus.
Among the many elaborate theatrical set-ups employing props (signs and often suitcases) and theater games is one that offers a statistical profile of the members of the cast:
ANNA: I represent the 73 percent of Russians on stage who live in a shelter.
ASHA: I represent the 82 percent of us who still have a parent in Russia.
ANASTASIA: I represent the 97 percent of us who still dream in Russian.
LEON: 27 percent of us do not think our family will pass the asylum interview.
TIERA: 63 percent of us hope we will become an artist when we grow up.
SpaceBridge feels overwhelming. Some of what makes it feel that way is unnecessary, Irina Kruzhilina working too hard to present too much in too many ways. But the feeling also seems apt. Overwhelmed is the proper response to some of the issues raised. It’s also surely how the children themselves are feeling. Their comments and brief stories are often compelling, sometimes amusing; their candid assessments of the dangers back home, and their fresh takes about their new life in New York. For all the complicated theatricality of the show, the voices of these young people come through clearly, allowing us to appreciate even familiar experiences in a new way.
“In New York I saw many streets which looked like the game Grand Theft Auto. When I walked around New York I felt like I was in the movie Home Alone.”
SpaceBridge is at La MaMa through January 11.
Photographs by Walter Wlodarczyk
