Now, a different kind of migration story, one involving theater and two Russians who left their country after the invasion of Ukraine and are now rebuilding their lives and careers in the U.S.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports on a recent production in New York for our Art and Action series exploring how art and democracy shape one another as part of our canvas

coverage.

It's a play within a play, with cabaret humor, even slapstick, alongside the drama of loss of friends, family, and country.

And I'm very thankful to all of you for allowing to tell the personal, sometimes even dramatic

story in a playful way.

For Alexander Malachnikov, the creator and director of Seagull True Story, this is personal. It's based on his own story.

What did you most want to bring out in this play?

I think the value of art, the value of art as air and water for some people, and not

only for people who make it, but sometimes for people who watch it.

But choosing between food and art, anybody would choose food if we are dying of hunger.

But for me, I literally realized through this experience how without doing theater, I start

kind of dying inside.

Let me speak through it.

Yes, sir.

Seagull True Story recently at New York's public theater plays off Anton Chekhov's classic The Seagull,

and tells of a young Russian theater director named Khan, Milachnikov's alter ego,

about to achieve his dream of directing a play at the world-renowned Moscow Art Theater.

When a very different kind of drama intervenes, Russia's invasion of Ukraine

in February 2022.

In the beginning, you don't think it's forever. Or maybe some people understood. I didn't.

Four years later, Malachnikov, who in his 20s had already directed productions at leading

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