The legend of Baba Yaga , the Slavic ‘witch’ who oscillated between eating children’s bones and being a force of good, has fascinated the world for centuries. John Wicke brought the name to the mainstream years ago, before playwright Kat Sandler reclaimed her with her play, Yaga. The play has now been adapted into a TV show by Kat, which sets Baba Yaga in the modern world, tasking two detectives with solving a crime in a small town that may be ‘haunted’ by this entity.
The play featured three actors playing 14 parts, two chairs, and a rolling desk on a bare stage that we used for everything. Because now, thanks to Mr Hudson Williams , so many people have read the play and know that version of the story and those twists, so what’s been very, very challenging and fun for me is departing from the story of the play,. Because we’re not worried about them being likeable, she’s very much in the style of those Dexters and Hannibals and those men that we’ll watch and be very entertained by watching them do bad things. Because they’re watchable, they are inherently likeable.
As Yaga is set to premiere in India on Lionsgate Play later this week, Kat sits down to talk to Hindustan Times about the story’s screen premiere, reclaiming the ‘witch’ as the anti-hero, and more. Kat Sandler: The biggest difference is just expanding it. So, the biggest thing was expanding not just the production but the mystery of it. I want it to be satisfying for that audience so they can enjoy it, but you also have to create way more characters, mystery, and clues, expand the world of Wittick, and make it a satisfying mystery for television. Kat Sandler: When I was writing the play, the inspirations were Broadchurch and Twin Peaks. They are in there. There’s a ton of fairy tales . There’s a ton of millennial romcoms and 90s witch movies like The Craft and detective thrillers like Seven and The Usual Suspects. But I love acknowledging that, in this world, John Wick exists, so you have that joke. Pop culture that knows other pop culture is very fun for me. Kat Sandler: I would call her the anti-hero. With Baba Yaga’s monologues in the TV show and in the play, she is trying to set the record straight and tell you what you’ve been getting wrong.
I like art that is self-aware and not precious, which is why there’s a line in the show where Rapp says, ‘Baba Yaga like in John Wick ,’ and Carrie’s character says, ‘What’s John Wick?
