In the summer of 2004, a German student travels to the Donbas and meets Nastia, a young mother. A fragile hope blossoms between them—for a different life, for a future that still seems possible at the time. The production follows the two of them through two decades, from Donetsk to Kyiv, from Moscow to Berlin, until Nastia’s trail vanishes into the fog of war.
Image gallery
NASTIA von Kateryna Penkova
Is Nastia the woman in Donetsk fighting for her survival? The one in Kyiv starting over? The one in Moscow adapting? The one in Berlin caught between worlds? Or is she all of these at once—a woman who must constantly reinvent herself because the world demands it of her?
NASTiA is not a play about Ukraine. It is a play that emerged from Ukraine. Andreas Merz and the Ukrainian author Kateryna Penkova, whom he met through the Theatre of Playwrights Kyiv, developed the story together—drawing on their own memories, their own ruptures, and the entanglement of two countries that has grown over twenty years. Their collaboration itself is part of the story they tell.
What remains are fragments of different life stories—and the question the play poses in the face of waning interest in this war: How much of Nastia’s story are we willing to hear?
(in German)
Dates
June 2026
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