My Uncle David: A Walk-in Memory

About this event

Director and writer Svetlana Fourer traced the life story of her uncle David through the archives of the Shoah Foundation: he survived a concentration camp but lost many family members, and the subject was never spoken about at home. Out of this silence she has built a walk-through memory space, inhabited by performer Yaroslava Gorobey who traces the paths of the Jewish Ochland family. The audience does not sit in rows; you stand and move through the room as the story unfolds around you, with live music by Berlin-based composer Matthias Bernhold – sometimes a gentle drone, sometimes a gripping pulse. The evening goes beyond family biography. It asks how memories we never lived ourselves nevertheless shape our identities and our sense of belonging. Set inside the Museum Judengasse, the performance gains an extra layer of place and history. The tone is quiet, serious and reflective; it rewards those who are happy to experience theatre without a fixed seat, and who want to spend an hour or so with a work that treats memory as a physical, shared act.