The Wandering Wolf
By Ewa Ladkowska
Where it began...
The idea for The Wandering Wolf came to me in 2017 while I was studying Drama & Theatre at Aberystwyth University. The solo performance became my final major project—and, in many ways, something much deeper than that.
It began as an exploration of my upbringing as a Third Culture Kid—someone raised across cultures, away from a singular sense of home for a significant part of their lives.
For me, it also became a way to explore unresolved grief—the kind that builds quietly over the years, that weighs on the heart and travels across borders with you.
I used the performance as an opportunity to break that cycle by:
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Naming what was ending.
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Honouring the chapter I was closing.
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Grieving it, ritualising it, and letting it go.
​
The Wandering Wolf helped me acknowledge that my time in Aberystwyth was coming to a close.
And for once, I was able to carry on without the pain of leaving.​
The Calling...
In 2023, I spent 10 days in silence at a meditation retreat.
No phone. No talking. Just me and my breath.
And somewhere in the stillness, I saw it clearly.
I saw myself performing again...
Originally created in 2017 as a farewell ritual—something that helped me say goodbye to a version of myself and step into the unknown as I left university—the piece now asks to be reimagined.
This version isn’t a rewrite. It’s a continuation.
The Wandering Wolf still wanders—through new questions, new memories, new landscapes (internal and external).
I am currently rehearsing in my living room. :)
And I am arriving to something...
The poem that inspired the performance...
There was no funeral,
No flowers,
No ceremony.
No one had died.
No weeping or wailing.
Just in my heart.
I can't...
But I did anyway,
and nobody knew I couldn't.
I don't want to...
But nobody else said they didn't.
So I put down my panic
and picked up my luggage
and got on the plane.
There was no funeral.
- 'Mock Funeral' by Alex Graham James (Third Culture Kids: Growing up Among worlds)