Offene Probe: „Sie kam aus Mariupol”

“For the longest time in my life, I didn’t even know that I was a child of forced labourers. For decades, I knew nothing about my own life,” writes the narrator on a summer night by a lake when she once again is unable to sleep. She delves into the dark rooms of her own memory in search of her mother, who disappeared forever from a flat in Bavaria in 1956 when the narrator was just eleven years old.

What begins with an internet search for her mother’s name develops an incredible dynamic. The narrator discovers an entire family; papers that have survived decades of purges, famines and two dictatorships – and, in the end, even someone she can embrace. Stas Zhyrkov was director of one of the most exciting contemporary theatres in Kyiv until the start of the war in Ukraine. His most recent production at the Kammerspiele was “News from the Past”.

“The story of Natascha’s family is the story of many Eastern European women, spanning the entire 20th century. The pain makes it full of love and empathy. That is the only way we can understand each other better.”

– Stas Zhyrkov, director