Où Commence ma mémoire

A work on childhood, memories, borders, and the power of the imaginary.
This is a solo, a monologue.

This is a solo, a monologue.
Alone on stage, the actor unfolds the thoughts and universe, the fragments of life of this
child, adolescent who traverses a war, continents, languages and forests… It is the
biography of Aharon Appelfeld, author born in Ukraine who arrived in Israel after a long
exile.
This exodus of a child and then of an adolescent is transcended.
Through the drama of war, loss and survival, the author constructs a universe, not
historical or documentary, but a protean tale.
It is assembled with questions that are dear to us : the vision of the world from a child’s
perspective, the reach of an imagination that can both help survive as well as make
understand. Appelfeld’s writing is a writing of silences, like a score that simply names to
open doors. Behind each one : memory, language, sensations.
At the threshold of each: maternal love, the forest as a space of exploration and
protection, the narrative as a link to others and to others.
An adventure.
Writing is not a testimony; it refuses to be so.
Nevertheless, it does not spare our complexities, our loyalties, our boundaries.
These questions, always in play, are also those of the theatre.
Spaces of imagination in dialogue, realities and adventures coexisting, cruelties and big
hearts: it is all at once deployed on stage with objects, light beams, suggestions, verbs, and
presences.

For the spectator, as for Appelfeld’s reader, there will always remain a part of the journey
to make on their own, a long silence, an inspiration, a contemplation. But something will
have grown, within us and outside.
Something more powerful that brings us closer to the notion of humanity.