Nicu?

A note from our Artistic Director, Stephanie Barton-Farcas (here with Nicu in 1990):

‘I worked with abandoned kids in Romania in the 90’s and the most amazing one was Nicu, who was 5. Nicu was in diapers and did not walk, talk or feed himself. They told me he was deaf, autistic and retarded and should be discarded. Nicu had spent 5 years on his back in a crib. I got angry and said, ‘I’ll take him.’

Six months later he did all those things.

He and I fought some big, bad battles together to get him there—to get him to choose life. And in the process he changed my life. Though he was mentally and physically challenged. Nicu viewed the world with wonder. He spent hours bouncing sunlight off of a spoon. When he began to eat solid food at the age of 5, his spoon was everything to him.

Nicu’s spoon became the symbol for us for all the impossible things that were suddenly possible. Things like walking, talking, thinking, and living. He was HIV positive and we lost him 5 years later in 1996.

Nicu’s life was about quality, not quantity-about life’s impossibles becoming possible.