Amadoka

About the production

»Štó sym?«, prašeše so přeco a přeco zaso. »Wěš ty, štó sym? Njemóžu so na ničo dopomnić.« (Amadoka)

»Who am I?« he asked over and over again. »Do you know who I am? I can't remember anything.« (Amadoka)

 

Romana, an archivist from Kyiv, recognises her husband in an unnamed soldier who returns from the war in Donbass seriously injured. She tries with all her might to restore his memory. Four old, well-travelled suitcases full of photos, papers, a leather-bound notebook and a mysterious lion's head made of stone are the means to this end. All of these silent witnesses are intended to provide an occasion for remembrance. They take us back to the 1930s, to the small Galician town of Butschatsch with its multi-ethnic population. Here, the adolescent Pinkas, son of the shochet, shows the Ukrainian girl Ulyana the site of the legendary, vanished Lake Amadoka, which once stretched proudly across the maps of Europe.

Ulyana's father, who had hidden Ukrainian nationalists and independence fighters between the wars, tried to help his Jewish neighbours during the Nazi occupation at the risk of his life. In an age of extermination and fear of death, priests become partisans, neighbours become informers, Ukrainian children become murderers, Jews become auxiliary policemen, victims become perpetrators. Or vice versa. Whether help and rescue can be expected from the approaching Soviets is assessed differently depending on one's point of view and experience.

To Romana's astonishment, it is not the lion's head of the statue of St Onufrij that awakens the sick man's memories. It is the letters of a poet and scientist who played a dubious role during the Stalinist purges of the intelligentsia in Soviet Ukraine.

Sofia Andrukhovych's highly complex panorama, which spans an entire century, impressively shows that Ukraine's present can only be understood through its history. At the same time, this great and magnificent work is also a parable for the unreliability of memory and the manipulability of identity.

»If ever a novel has found a form and a tone for the history of Ukraine in all its suffering and all its abysses, then it is this dizzying epic«, wrote Sonja Zekri in her review in the »Süddeutsche Zeitung«.

 

 

Sceniske čitanje
Po tym wotměje so awtorska rozmołwa ze Sofiju Andruchowytsch (simultany přełožk ukrainsce-němsce)

Scenic Reading
Followed by an author talk with Sofia Andrukhovych (simultaneous translation Ukrainian-German)

 

 

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Reading

followed by a panel discussion until approx. 9.30 pm

 

Contributors:

Artistic direction and text version: Heike Merten-Hommel

Panel discussion with the author Sofia Andrukhovych,

moderated by Sonja Zekri