You did it.

At least out of Kyiv, to Poland.

It's going to be a long way back, to a different life and onto a stage.

Oleksandra Indik, called Sasha, 25 years old, actress trained in Kyiv, is on her way to her other home, her real home, to Wiesbaden.

She sits on the train with her colleagues Sofia Baskakova, Diana Baydun and Mira Zhuchkova.

The selfie she sent us looks like everything is normal.

Four young women smiling on the train.

Eva Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor of the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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But since February 24, her life has been turned completely upside down.

"It's tough, not just because we see and hear everything.

Many more areas and cities than Mariupol are affected.

There are dead bodies everywhere, mines, not just the few pictures you see,” says Sasha.

"My uncle is now a soldier, friends of mine lost family members, I personally lost three people I knew.

There is nobody who is not affected by the war.”

Sasha says she was only able to start talking about it a few days ago.

"It was very difficult for me.

But I have to get out of my world and be ready again to speak to society on stage.

Before that, I couldn't imagine playing at all.” But now her decision has been made: from May 6th she will perform with the “Wanderbühne” again at Schloss Freudenberg, play, sing, tell stories, show videos, and answer questions .

It will, so much is certain, be very different from what was originally planned as an "extra" to the Wiesbaden International May Festival.

A lively cultural transfer

"I feel it's very important to be here now," says Sasha.

“And it is precisely this work that gives me strength and concentration.

I asked myself so many questions.

How can we talk about that - now?

How can you make art when you are confronted with death all around you?

It's a completely new perspective on making art.” After days of rigidity, this also led to discussions among colleagues.

Now the four women who have set out together with the somewhat older musicians Anna and Serhiy Okhrimchuk, who are currently on tour in Poland, want to develop three programs in a breathtakingly short time: about art, culture and life in Ukraine as it is.

Now.

One of the three evenings will be called “The Diaries of War”.

Because the war caught them all.

The half-dozen Ukrainian actors who have been brought together by chance and a shared passion since 2016 have also been doing theater in changing constellations at Schloss Freudenberg.

The alternative art and creative location, the "field of experience" founded by Beatrice and Matthias Schenk over 30 years ago, has become an artistic home.

What has to do with the daughter of the founders, Katharina Schenk, 36, herself an actress and director and now head of Freudenberg.


Since Schenk first went to Ukraine in 2015 to work as a director with young acting students, including Sasha and Sam, as part of an exchange program for the European Theater Convention, a close bond has developed, a love story.

A lively cultural transfer between the lively Kiev theater scene, where the productions developed in Wiesbaden were then shown, and the castle.

"Ukraine is always in our performances, we sing in Ukrainian, we cook in Ukrainian," says Schenk.

They also mastered the pandemic together, sometimes with adventurous trans-European car trips.