Mariupol: Hoffnung lebt –
sie ist am Leben

With no idea how they got there or how they will get out – or even if they want to.
Based on true stories of horrors inflicted on women in the war in Ukraine, »Closed Sky« is Ukrainian playwright Neda Nejdana’s remarkable and ultimately uplifting response to the Russian airstrike on the Mariupol theatre which killed 600 people, written in Summer 2022 — within 7 weeks of the atrocity.

36th Marine Brigade took part in the battle for Mariupol which went on for 82 days. The Brigade sustained heavy losses and later was surrounded. The commander had to send to battle every able-bodied parson, both the main and the auxiliary personnel, including the entire brass band. Main character of the play is a trumpeter whose call sign, naturally, is Trumpeter. He is the sole survivor out of the band. Actually, the Trumpeter is not your ordinary performer. A graduate from the composers department of a conservatory, he is the Creator. All throughout the show, the Trumpeter is searching for the formula of harmony of war and dreaming of writing the Symphony of War. A conflicted creative person, he is torn inside, caught in the battle between creativity and the destructive essence of the war. Eventually, he comes to realize there can be no formula of harmony of war, because the war stands for cacophony, a state totally devoid of harmony.