Souvenir

What has to happen for a play to stay unforgotten? What can the performers do to make you remember them and their act? Questions as these stand at the very core of Souvenir, concerned mainly with the mechanisms of memory. Our present western-european society is built around the wish to be remembered – from memorials to job interviews. But how come I mix up the story of my first kiss with a movie scene? Why do I remember things that my parents told me about my childhood in a first-person perspective? Memory is a fragile thing – and yet we build our whole identity around it.

Theatre, radically speaking, consists of nothing but memory – the actors on stage know every move and word by heart, and after you leave the theatre, nothing but memory stays with you.
Souvenir is not your classical lecture-performance, as most of the play happens in your head only – from the stage design to the moment a performer hits you with her trident. In order to stay in your brain forever, we let you, the audience, remember the evening the way you’d imagine it. We lead you on, of course, through questions and tales. We let you imagine the stage design through ancient greek mnemotechnics. We describe the things that would have to happen so you’d have a trauma and thus be unable to forget us. We let you remember and thus inscribe ourselves into your memory.

website: http://www.macigardening.net

In 2015, Souvenir was performed at Schlachthaus Theater Bern, Theater ROXY Birsfelden, Theaterdiscounter Berlin