As they took a break, they gathered in a circle with their arms around each other, laughing and chattering. Though the play is set decades ago, for these actors, the subject is close to heart, and the mere fact of rehearsal a triumph.
Before the attack, the word"children" had been spelled out as a warning in large white lettering on the ground outside. Hundreds of people had sheltered in the theatre during the siege, among them four members of the theatre company. She sought safety in a basement office with a colleague and that woman's family, but even before the strike, food and water were running low.
Eventually, Ms Lebedynska and her group fled on foot to a nearby town, and joined a humanitarian convoy that brought them to safety. Mariupol's Academic Regional Drama Theater acting director Liudmila Kolosovych with actors rehearsing for a new play. PHOTO: NYTIMES Eventually, Mr Shevchenko said, Russian forces, under the barrel of a gun, took him and his sister from their home and sent them to a filtration camp in Novoazovsk, a city in the Donetsk region of Ukraine that was occupied by pro-Russian forces.In the camp, he was fingerprinted, questioned and treated like a criminal, he said. They were then sent to Russia but made their way out through Georgia, then on to Germany, Poland and back to Ukraine.
She spent weeks alone in her home as the city was bombarded before her son's friends helped her get to the West.