PUSSYCAT IN MEMORY OF DARKNESS March ’23 AND THE TRUMPETER February ‘24
In February 2023, Larissa Itina invited me to perform Pussycat in Memory of Darkness in Wiesbaden. The performance had an extraordinary reception. The Mayor of Wiesbaden, who had initially only come at the prompting of his wife, said afterwards that the play had caused him to re-evaluate both his views about the war in Ukraine and the 4000 refugees who Wiesbaden was hosting.
When Larissa, her husband Misha and Steven Bailey, the businessman/artist, approached him in late 2023, he offered to be the patron of what has now become Wiesbaden’s brand-new festival, Festival For Ukraine, organised by Pritimka, the charity established by Larissa and Misha in 2022 to help Ukrainian refugees, and by Steven. The Mayor’s agreement meant that businesses in Wiesbaden and its surroundings gave immediate financial support to the festival.
I was asked to return with a new one-person show, performed at the Staatstheater. Vladimir Shcherban, the director, and I took John Farndon's translation of Inna Goncharova’s play, The Trumpeter, to Germany in February ’24. Inna and her husband, Viktor - and Galina Sadomtseva, the film producer - drove across Ukraine to join us. Neda Nezhdana was there, too, having brought four young Ukrainian actresses by bus to perform her play, Closed Sky. The festival, conceived by Larissa, Misha and Steven was a huge success, with over 20 events and with marvellous contributions from German and Ukrainian musicians, as well as actors and singers from Ukraine and Poland and the UK. I performed at the glorious Staatstheater, in the middle of Wiesbaden, which has offered the theatre again next year for another Festival For Ukraine.