Lara: A Love Story by Racine Oxtoby

In 1949, while Boris Pasternak was busy writing Doctor Zhivago, his mistress Olga Ivinskaya was arrested by the KGB and thrown into a gulag, where she would spend the next four years. This was done in an attempt to get Boris Pasternak to stop writing Zhivago, which was considered critical of the Soviet system. However, in all those years in captivity, Olga never turned against Boris, and Doctor Zhivago would eventually prove to be his masterpiece. Lara: A Love Story views the creation and publication of Doctor Zhivago as seen from Boris and Olga’s relationship, examining the hardships and sacrifices made by the couple and how their bond helped shape the classic novel into existence.

Racine Oxtoby is a lifelong Truro resident who enjoys writing plays based on historical events. Her play Funtimes in Babylon, about the Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle manslaughter trials, premiered as a staged reading at the Provincetown Theater in 2023. She has written for the 24-Hour Theater Festival three times. She is also a local actress, having recently appeared in Casa Valentina, Mae West’s The Drag, and The Glass Menagerie, all at the Provincetown Theater. As her day job, Racine is the outreach coordinator at the Wellfleet Public Library.

The Truro Playwright Collective is a group of established, local playwrights who present staged readings of their full-length works once a month from October through March.

Funding in part by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod