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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
''A room with no air' is about two first generation Australians linked by their cultural histories. German gentile and Polish Jew, they struggle to understand the terrible dynamic that is their legacy. They probe beneath the surface of what they know to expose the paradoxes of their relationship. They reveal the tragic and complex repercussions of violence perpetrated by one culture on another and its impact on future generations. Moving between memory, nightmare and domesticity they confront each other with their opposing perspectives in an attempt to break the silence. The work is highly charged physically and vocally, is both lyrical and brutal, eschews naturalism and narrative but has a strong, clear dramaturgical spine. It poses many questions that speak to the palpable political tensions that have surfaced in Australia.' (Production abstract)
Production Details
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First performed at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney Olympics Arts Festival, Sydney 1998
Further performances :
1999 : University of Western Sydney
1999 : Magdalena Aotorea International Arts Festival,
Wellington NZ2000 APAM at Adelaide International Arts Festival
2001 Performance Space, Sydney
WRITERS/PERFORMERS Deborah Leiser-Moore Regina Heilmann
DIRECTOR Nikki Heywood
COMPOSER Elena Kats-Chernin
LIGHTING DESIGNER/ PRODUCTION MANAGER Richard Montgomery
DRAMATURG/WRITER Noelle Janaczewska
DRAMATURG/RESEARCHER Annemaree Dalziel
RADIO SOUND COMPILATION Garry Bradbury
SET DESIGNERS Leonie Evans and Clarissa Arndt
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Breathtaking Performance: 'A Room with No Air's' Exhaustive Aesthetics of Holocaust Memory
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , May no. 74 2019; (p. 129-160)'What is the place of Jewish Holocaust memory in the context of a decolonising Australia? Can Holocaust memory model a possibility of responsiveness to the broader memory cultures in which it occurs? This article begins with the call for a 'radical democratic politics' of memory offered by Michael Rothberg, which 'does not entail a removal of Holocaust memory from the public sphere, but rather a decentering of its abstract, reified form' (2011: 540). In a discussion of the Australian contemporary performance work 'a room with no air', which premiered at Sydney's Performance Space in 2001, this article contemplates the archive of recent Australian theatre history to explore how questions of collective responsibility might be modelled by a re-staging of German- Jewish intergenerational legacies.' (Publication abstract)
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Breathtaking Performance: 'A Room with No Air's' Exhaustive Aesthetics of Holocaust Memory
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , May no. 74 2019; (p. 129-160)'What is the place of Jewish Holocaust memory in the context of a decolonising Australia? Can Holocaust memory model a possibility of responsiveness to the broader memory cultures in which it occurs? This article begins with the call for a 'radical democratic politics' of memory offered by Michael Rothberg, which 'does not entail a removal of Holocaust memory from the public sphere, but rather a decentering of its abstract, reified form' (2011: 540). In a discussion of the Australian contemporary performance work 'a room with no air', which premiered at Sydney's Performance Space in 2001, this article contemplates the archive of recent Australian theatre history to explore how questions of collective responsibility might be modelled by a re-staging of German- Jewish intergenerational legacies.' (Publication abstract)
