Natalia has enjoyed a respected career in professional theatre. She has performed representative roles in Pippin, Sound of Music, Funny Girl, Juno and the Paycock, Oklahoma, Dames at Sea, and Starting Here, Starting Now among many others. Natalia also wrote, performed, and produced Talespinners, a children’s storytelling production that toured the United States and many Twin Cities locations with over 400 performances. Natalia was most recently seen onstage in Nabucco and Hamlet with the Minnesota Opera. One of her strong suits is her ability to develop character voices and her skillfulness in adopting regional American and international dialects.
Musical Director
Using her musical talents in the theater, Natalia has acted as Musical Director and Orchestral Conductor for professional, community and scholastic theater, in particular for the celebrated Hill-Murray theater program and their swing choir group, Pioneer Performers. Venues have included the St. Paul Hotel, Loring Park Theatre in Minneapolis, Lakeshore Players in White Bear Lake, Minnesota and Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, Wisconsin. Among the most challenging and rewarding productions of the more than forty she has directed have been Les Miserables, Into the Woods, and The Secret Garden. Natalia also established a comprehensive arts program and performances using music, theater and dance for pre-school children while living in the Washington, D.C., area.
Borderland
In May, 2016 Natalia Peterson received a McKnight Fellowship Grant to write both the book [script] and music for a multi-media, full-length musical stage production she developed entitled Borderland. The story conveys the life of Ukrainians before, during and after World War II, of those who immigrated to other countries and of those who ultimately did not survive. The title Borderland is the literal translation of the word Ukraine, or Ukrayina, as pronounced by Ukrainians.
This faction of history of Ukrainians has not been significantly illustrated to the general public – their culture, their nationalism, and most importantly, the oppression and mass killings of this particular group of people. In Timothy Snyder’s book Bloodlands, the account of Ukrainian people who died by mass killing or starvation are 3.5 million under Stalin from 1932-1938, another 3.5 million due to German killing policies from 1941-1944 and about 3 million more who died in combat or as a direct consequence of the war. These ten million people represented nearly one-third of the population of Ukraine during 1932-1945.
Borderland is based on the stories of actual events that occurred with Natalia Peterson’s own parents, Anna Jaworska Makowesky (Hania) and Lubomyr Makowesky (Lyubko), great- Uncle Yakiv Makoweckyj, as well as her parents’ friends and contemporaries. Natalia’s original music will replicate the sounds of traditional Ukrainian folk style and the production will also include Ukrainian folk dance, an art form that has been kept alive all over the world by Diasporic Ukrainians.