Something to remember me by
An engaging blend of delicate sensitivity and tenderness, contrasting extreme passion, desperation, and grief.
Film: Thomas Hirt. Artwork & installation: Sheila Millward
Set within the squalid confines of Terezin (Teresienstadt) ghetto and (essentially) concentration camp, this work explores and exposes faith, hope, and defiant love - against all the odds. The fusion of theatre, text, dance, mime, poetry, fine art, fabric, installation, 'live' music and chocolates(!) are set against a backdrop of live music providing a potent, rich physical expression with disturbing empathy.
"Something to remember me by" centres around seven poems written by children from the Terezin ghetto - children whose world is inhabited by characters on the edge of despair and the threshold of wild imagination. Dark visual imagery combines with an evocative and compelling story of struggle, dreams, freedom and butterflies. Moments of grief give way to rich moments of joy and laughter.
Haunting, vivid, powerful and extremely moving, this physical theatre piece is relevant today in every culture, at times both grotesque and touchingly beautiful.
The performance piece takes as its starting point the poems of these children from the ghetto, and weaves a compelling story that inspires, deeply moves, and challenges us to our very core."Something to remember me by" is about perseverance, healing, determination and hope. lt's about hatred and love - a reminder and .... remembrance.
"Something to remember me by" is an engaging piece of Physical Theatre that continues to echo well after the final curtain and won't easily be forgotten.
This is the complete piece of contemporary, modern theatre. Totally complete. (Professional Theatre industry production professional, London West End).
This piece was simply unflinchingly honest and almost unbearably real. More than just being accurate, it was also passionate and respectful. I lost both my parents in the holocaust; - tonight through this piece you did them proud. (Audience member whose parents were killed in the holocaust).
Thank you for understanding and so passionately expressing the mundane, for your accuracy, integrity and respect... it was cathartic and redemptive. I cried. Thank you. (Holocaust survivor).
You touched 'the Holy Grail'. A lot of people don't like that or know what to do with it. Congratulations. (Edinburgh Fringe Festival).
A sophisticated, complex and extremely visceral physical theatre performance piece, it's a very fine line between propaganda, sensationalism and disproportionate melancholy; Something to Remember me by got it perfectly right. (Audience member and war historian).
You gave us way over and above what we could have imagined. The audience response says it all. Thank you, Thank you, Thank You! (Organiser and commissioner of the Sacred Arts Festival, Prague who invited and commissioned the piece).
More audience comments:
I came to see this piece expecting to be confronted with and disturbed by the subject matter, which I most definitely was. I did not expect to find such beauty, sensitivity, invitation and hope within a work and subject so very dark. This piece will stay with me (in a positive way) for a very long time.
It was amazing how you managed to find genuine humour, joy and even play whilst still managing to maintain a true integrity to the graphic darkness.
The movement, clever multiple use of objects and live poetry presentation was stunning and really quite remarkable.
