by Selfconscious PRODUCTIONS (Toronto)
The (mostly) true story of an odyssey to Poland that a son and mother – both descendants of Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors – took while accompanied by Katka Reszke (Polish-Jewish scholar and author of Return of the Jew) as their guide.
We Keep Coming Back is a story that Michael Rubenfeld set in motion and one that now involves a core co-creative team. It was a trip of return to the country of Michael and his mother’s cultural origin. While elemental in its urge to reunite mother and son, the work is also steeped with a contemporary politic. While seeking to understand Poland’s complicated history, the narrative takes an unexpected turn in discovering a vibrant contemporary world of Jewish life in Poland.
In her book Return of the Jew, Katka Reszke refers to this narrative as the ‘Generation Unexpected’ – this is a new generation of young Polish Jews who are mostly descendants of Jewish families who had hid their roots to survive both the pogroms and later, the Shoah. It was only after the fall of Communism in 1990, that it became safe to once again practice as a Jew in Poland. Subsequently, thousands of discoveries of unexpected Jewish histories have been made – and these stories are growing every day.
In the performance, the concept of ‘generation unexpected’ is realized both in the retelling of Katka’s own story of personal Jewish discovery, and by dissecting Poland’s confrontation with the energy of a revitalized Jewish narrative in Poland, and the deep roots of a North American antipathy towards Poland. To borrow from and broaden Katka’s term, ‘generation unexpected’ characterizes the surprising positions each of the four characters in We Keep Coming Back are revealed to hold. It also elementally sits at the nexus of unexpected results forever revealing themselves in the other generation.
We Keep Coming Back is presented in a visually and audio rich environment, incorporating video footage from the team’s research trips, archival material (photographs, maps), and live and recorded music. The creators play themselves.
It was developed in Toronto and Poland.
SELFCONSCIOUS PRODUCTIONS is the performance company of Canadian theater makers Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley. They both share the belief that other people and being alive are both very confusing. They think that this is probably why they get along so well and also why they both remain interested in using the theatre as a place to explore how hard it is to do and be the things they most want to do and be. But they also believe that it is possible. So they keep trying. Their shows are The Book of Judith, The Failure Show, mothermothermother…, and We Keep Coming Back.
In cooperation with the 31st Jewish Culture Days Berlin
Given the assignment (by an absent teacher) to explain the statement the students begin to weave a tale that is both as familiar as it is absurd. And tragically true (well at least based on a true story).
An alternate version of history. A parable about the eternal battle of inheritance between two brothers and the fate of two tribes.
Bette Davis was one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. Between 1931 and 1989, she acted in more than a hundred films, won the Oscar twice and was nominated another eight times. Some of the greatest movies in motion picture history – Of Human Bondage, Jezebel, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, or All About Eve – are Bette Davis films. She was uncompromising, fought for better scripts, had no qualms about playing antagonistic characters and always wanted to be authentic. Davis was a living example that you can have a career and stay true to yourself – if you’re prepared to pay the price of loneliness. A life worthy of a movie.
A dream comes true: upon the invitation of U.S. director and producer Susan Batson, Bettina Lohmeyer developed, wrote and performed her play “Bette Davis… “Fasten Your Seatbelts!” in Batson’s studio theater in New York. After intense research, including interviews with Bette Davis’ contemporaries, Bettina Lohmeyer staged the Davis myth: hard as nails, quick-witted, assertive and just as uncompromising, vulnerable and full of humor.
This performance is about the Apocalypse. About the rising sea waters, and the invisible plagues. About when Cillian wakes up from his coma, and there’s no one about so he breaks into a vending machine for a can of Coke. About the futures we allow ourselves to envision.
Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds
Deborah Zoe Laufer grew up in Liberty, New York. She attended State University of New York at Purchase and Juilliard School in New York City, where she graduated from the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program in 2000, and was also the playwright-in-residence. Her works have been produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Portland Stage and eighty other theaters around the country, in Germany, Russia and Canada. Her plays include The Last Schwartz, Fortune, End Days, Out of Streno, Sirens, Leveling Up, Meta, The Three Sisters of Weehawken, The Gulf of Westchester, Miniatures, and Random Acts.
