"Yellow Ribbon" in Hostomel: A Performance About Occupation Where It Actually Happened
An author's performance about survival returns to where it all began — to Hostomel, which stood under Russian military forces for 35 days.
By Oleg Bazylewicz
April 8, 2026 · 1 min read
Hostomel is not just a name on the map of Kyiv region. This is a place where some of the fiercest battles of the first weeks of the full-scale invasion took place in spring 2022. It is here, where traces of what happened are still visible, that the original production "Yellow Ribbon" will be shown.
Yellow ribbon is a recognizable symbol: it was used to mark property, houses, and people in occupied territories. For those who went through occupation, this is not a theatrical metaphor, but a detail from their own memory.
The screening in Hostomel is a conscious decision to perform not in a capital theater, but where the events of the performance had a real geographical counterpart. This changes the nature of viewing: a spectator and a character may turn out to be neighbors or the same person.
This approach — theater at the site of trauma — poses a specific question to the genre: is art capable of doing what a document or report cannot, when the audience is sitting literally in the midst of what is being depicted on stage?
"Yellow Ribbon" is an original work created based on real testimonies of people who experienced occupation in Kyiv region. Details of the screening are being clarified by organizers.
The question that remains after the announcement: will the Hostomel screening become a one-time act of remembrance — or the beginning of a practice where Ukrainian plays about war deliberately go beyond the safe confines of theater halls to where what they describe actually took place?
