Postkarten aus dem Osten

Four friends celebrate their reunion. They met in Mariupol in 2014, when the two Germans were doing research for a local project. Together they experienced the beginning of the war in the same year and fled the city together. They remained in contact, writing and visiting each other. They experienced the renewed attack on Mariupol in 2022 in different places: Maria as a high school teacher in Berlin, Lukas in Chile during the shooting of his new documentary film, Anastasiia at the law faculty in Kyiv, and Orest preparing for a festival in Mariupol. He leaves on the last train before the encirclement. Now the four of them gather in a spacious old apartment in Berlin and reminisce about their student days. Lukas has cooked, Maria and Orest are finally a couple, and Anastasiia misses her husband, who is not allowed to tell where he is currently fighting. They are no longer students. How to behave in the face of war? What suffering, but also what new ways of life does the war cause? How can resistance to injustice be practiced?
Stas Zhyrkov stages plays in Ukraine, Germany, Switzerland and Lithuania. From 2014 to 2019 he was Artistic Director at Golden Gate Theatre Kyiv and from 2019 to 2022 in the same position at Left Bank Theatre Kyiv. He is currently part of the management team of the State Small Theater in Vilnius. He already staged "Taking arms against a sea of plagues (ОЗБРОЮЮЧИСЬ ПРОТИ МОРЯ ЛИХ)" at the Schaubühne last season. His new project with ensemble members and Ukrainian players is part of a joint collaboration of European theaters "Resistance & Collaboration": How did resistance and collaboration determine the manifestations of Nazi injustice in various places in Europe? This question is being addressed by a European theater association, funded by the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future as part of the Educational Agenda for National Socialist Injustice. Together with Teatro Joven from Madrid and the National Theater of Northern Greece in Thessaloniki, the project explores collaboration with and resistance to Nazi injustice.