Director Andreas Merz was on the verge of a great career in the theater country of Russia. In 2010, he was given the opportunity to work abroad for the first time. “So I ended up in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine long before the current war there could have been imagined.
At that time, Donetsk was a modern city on the rise – and the participants in our street theatre project dreamed of a European future for their homeland,” he recalls.
© Inga Peredii
Merz then worked in the Russian Federation until 2021 and was nominated several times for the national Russian theater award “Golden Mask”. However, in protest against the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Andreas Merz decided not to continue his career in Russia.
In 2022, he contacted the players in Donetsk at the time. Some have since fled to Berlin, others have come to show the reality of life in their homeland in their documentary play “Donetsk.UA”.
“Our Ukrainian colleagues are delighted to be able to play here today in such a beautiful and free city as Berlin – and then reality catches up with us again and again,” says Andreas Merz.
His tips for this weekend also fall between these emotional poles.
1 Theatrical journey to the Donbass
© Valeriya Treshchiva
This time my weekend starts on Thursday – with our premiere of “Donezk.UA” at TD Berlin.
Two years have now passed since I decided – in response to the Russian attack – to visit my old friends from Donetsk and retrace their life stories to show how the war has changed people’s lives.
In 2010 we did street theater together in eastern Ukraine, and today we are having our premiere together in Berlin. There is a lot of excitement, as the performance is bilingual.
But what is stage fright when our thoughts are with all our friends who cannot be with us in Berlin today. We will certainly have earned the vodka after the show.
2 Yoga with a panoramic view
© imago images/POP-EYE/imago images/POP-EYE/Christian Behring via www.imago-images.de
On Saturday morning, our actresses Katya and Zoryana want to take me to yoga. Kateryna has come for our project from Armenia, where she fled in 2014, and she now lives with Zoryana in a shared apartment on Landsberger Allee.
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The two of them discovered the almost forgotten Volkspark Prenzlauer Berg, a small wilderness in the middle of the city, where they want to drag me today to do yoga on the large viewing platform. But whether they actually succeed remains to be seen. The attraction of my pillow is probably greater in the end…
3 Sundowners
© IMAGO/Funke Foto Services/IMAGO/Joerg Krauthoefer
If you rehearse a lot, you need to relax even more. One place that I rediscovered thanks to our Ukrainian teammates is the Modersohn Bridge in Friedrichshain. With a cold beer from the Späti, we watch the sun slowly set over the west of the city.
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And Zoryana from Lviv hums “Рани ся гоють” – “The wounds will heal” from the song Tsunamia, with which she took part in the Ukrainian preselection for the Eurovision Song Contest with her folk band Yagody (photo at the top) – 12 points from Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg!
4 Here’s to a “Ukrainian Sunset”
© promo
On Saturday evening, the team and I will end our premiere week at Space Meduza on Skalizer Straße. For years, the Kreuzberg bar has become a living room in a foreign country for many Ukrainians.
But all other new and old Berliners can also soak up Ukrainian joie de vivre in the form of crazy cocktail creations such as “Mermaid of Dniester”, “Ukrainian Sunset” or “Kyiv Mule”. And on top of that, there is a live gig with different bands every Friday and Saturday.
This Friday, French singer Odde Brisson and Danish composer Julian Winding, whose songs were featured in the film “The Neon Demon”, will perform.
Together we dive into the night, where we briefly forget the horrors we have dealt with over the last month. What remains is the hope for a new morning without fear and war – and hopefully enough headache tablets for the aftermath of this night.
5 Ukrainian lucky charms
© Mariia Krutoholova
On the Sunday after the premiere, I go hunting for farewell gifts and lucky charms from a good friend: the Kyiv artist Maria Krutoholva (@maria.krutoholova), who sells her paintings at the Boxhagener Platz flea market.
Maria’s paintings are a reinterpretation of traditional Ukrainian motifs such as the famous Motanka dolls in a modern design – but potatoes (pictured) and borscht also get a face in her drawings.
In February 2022, she traveled to Berlin with a small suitcase to visit friends for a week, but she has now stayed for more than two years because of the war in her homeland.