The Dead Ones is a performance piece written and performed by Margie Fischer and is showing at the Seymour Centre from Wednesday 18th until Saturday 22nd of February.
Its a personal exploration into a universal story, with themes that resonate with all members of the audience. Our journey began in WW2 Austria and followed her parent's plight to Shanghai as Austrian-Jewish refugees. After 10years in China, her parents moved to Australia and built a life in East Lindfield. Yet, the tale is more than a simple refugee story.
In retelling the lives of her parents, Fischer explored her family history in what seemed to be a moment of catharsis. The presentation- lecture style with corresponding images, held such a genuine tone and clarity in some of the most emotionally distressing times. Fischer explored themes of family, personal identity, memory, death and hope. Her storytelling wasn't particularly captivating, however it was the way Fischer managed to draw us with subtle humour, rhetorics and universal questions that I was able to identify with, for example, what happens to our memory when we are gone? Are we manifest in objects, space or is it enough to live in someone's mind? What's role do photographs play in context or out of it? Her selection of photos and images for the presentation seemed like archive material and soon enough, I was feeling quite at home learning about her family life and their dynamics.
The Dead Ones is definitely a time-of-life piece. I think it was a piece that formed part of Fischer's grieving process and showed how storytelling is vital in understanding, and later arranging, one's milestones into a conceivable structure. Commendations to Margie Fischer, who was able to hold her audience for the full duration, with a topic that must've been extremely difficult to research and confront.
