Producer: Mihai Eminescu National Theatre, Chișinău

Director: Petru Hadârcă

Set Design: Adrian Suruceanu

Costumes: Stela Verebceanu

Stage Movement: Oleg Mardari

Original Music: Valentin Lindo Strișcov

Video Design: Radu Zaporojanu

Duration: 2h 40 min (with intermission)

Recommended age: 14+

Synopsis: The novel The Glass Garden by Tatiana Țîbuleac deeply unsettled me and pulled me out of my inner comfort zone. It made me see the world from different perspectives: I felt the bitterness in the mouth of an orphaned child, the fears of a woman struggling with her femininity, the emptiness in the soul of someone desperately searching for identity. This confession, sometimes erupting in fury and cruelty, sometimes shifting to lyrical meditation, other times dissecting details meticulously or biting with irony, forces you to ask: by what miracle does an abandoned, unloved child, raped in adolescence, become a good person capable of loving and giving love?

Taken from an orphanage, named Lastocika (Swallow), raised by a Russian woman in a Chișinău dominated by the Russian language, where the courtyard was a battleground, the orphan grows up yearning for love, understanding, and cultural anchors with which she might identify. The maternal language, Romanian, keeps her rooted in her cultural and identity heritage and opens a path toward connection with the free world.

I believe the destiny of Lastocika – Swallow – speaks to many of us. On a larger scale, I can’t help but think it’s also about Bessarabia – the land of Moldova below the Prut. The performance offers no answers, just as the novel doesn’t. And we hope, like the novel, it will foster empathetic connections and provoke reflection.