RACHEL UND ICH

Performance by Lulu Obermayer and Rachel Troy

In German and English with surtitles.
Duration: approx . 75 min

RACHEL AND I is a performance about a twenty-year transatlantic friendship, about memory, and about the aftermath of the Holocaust for the so-called third generation.
Theater artist Lulu Obermayer and therapist and performer Rachel Troy met in 2005 at the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, where they studied acting and developed a close friendship. Obermayer grew up in Munich and has German ancestry, while Troy’s Romanian-Hungarian-Jewish grandparents—who were Auschwitz survivors—emigrated to the U.S. in 1947.

In their first artistic collaboration, Rachel Troy and Lulu Obermayer combine Lee Strasberg’s Method Acting, therapeutic techniques, party games, and storytelling to explore the aftermath of historical traumas and intergenerational narratives. The performance explores the interstices of consciousness, time, and language that shape our understanding of history and of personal and cultural identity. Through rituals and symbolic elements, Troy and Obermayer stage their relationship and reflect on the possibilities and limits of empathy and memory, as well as on the lingering effects of history. They use theater as a vibrant practice of remembrance—as a space where personal and political dimensions converge and an intense engagement with the past and present becomes tangible.

Awarded the Audience Choice Award at the “radikal jung” festival for emerging directors at the Munich Volkstheater.

Concept and Artistic Direction: Lulu Obermayer
Text and Performance: Lulu Obermayer, Rachel Troy
Lighting Design and Technical Direction: Michele Piazzi
Sound and Video Editing: Oliver Harlan
Camera: Borys Dubiański, Andi Szelyes
Surtitles and Translation: Caro Seidl and Emily Pollak (Panthea)
Dramaturgical Collaboration: Helena Eckert, Gábor Thury

A production by Lulu Obermayer with HochX Theater and Live Art München e.V., in co-production with Sophiensæle Berlin and Theater Rampe Stuttgart. With the kind support of the Department of Culture of the City of Munich.

This guest performance is supported by the Department of Strategic Cultural Policy of the City of Leipzig and by the NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ Guest Performance Funding Program for Theater, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as well as the state ministries of culture and the arts.