by Mirela Sandu Gheorghiu, photo: Maria Ștefănescu
A Romanian–Ukrainian Encounter in the Spirit of Humanity at the BABEL Festival 2025
There are moments when theatre is no longer just an art form — it becomes a form of comfort. An outstretched hand. An embrace beyond words. At this year’s edition of the BABEL International Festival, Târgoviște became a place where borders ceased to exist, and the stage turned into a sacred space of solidarity between Romanian and Ukrainian artists.
The Little Prince, a co-production between the Tony Bulandra Theatre and the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre, is more than a tender adaptation of Exupéry’s tale. It is a story told by a mother to her son in the midst of a world adrift. The two Ukrainian actors, refugees from Mariupol, bring with them not only talent, but also scars, heavy silences, and gazes that know what it means to lose everything — and still continue to tell stories.
Director Mihai Constantin Ranin envisioned a performance where technology (VR goggles) and emotion (live music, the mother’s gestures, the child’s silences) intertwine in an initiatory journey of rediscovery. Through a fragile universe built from light, sound, and memories, the child rediscovers the world through his mother’s eyes — and we, the audience, rediscover ourselves. Beneath the stars they watch together, everything regains meaning.
And when night falls over Târgoviște, the fire of Gloria ignites something within us. Voskresinnia Theatre from Lviv brings to Mihai Viteazul Square an explosion of light and movement: dance, flames, ancestral rhythms, bodies telling stories without words. Director Yaroslav Fedoryshyn succeeds in compressing an entire world — birth, suffering, hope — into a scenic ritual that transcends any linguistic or cultural barrier. Gloria does not need to be understood. It is felt. It is lived. It is breathed.
Two performances. Two worlds. Two ways of speaking about pain and healing. But one single message: theatre is alive as long as we look at each other with open hearts.
The collaboration between Tony Bulandra Theatre and Ukrainian artists is proof that, when words are no longer enough, theatre remains. Art remains — to say what we cannot voice. What remains is the courage to step onto a stage even when your home has been destroyed, your city silenced — but your heart still pulses with the desire to give.
At the BABEL Festival 2025, beyond the shows, costumes, and applause, there is a silent and profound meeting between people. Between artists who don’t know each other, but share the same dreams. Between an audience that listens and the souls who, every evening, step onto the stage to bring light into the darkness.
Because, in the end, this is what theatre is about: saying, with all our human fragility and beauty,
“We are here. Together.”
