Dreams Die Hard
Dreams Die Hard travels through many landscapes and summons ghosts from the past on a journey towards truth and tolerance. From London to Cyprus and way beyond.
The production weaves projection with live shadow puppetry; war time politics with Brexit time politics; the drama of 1940’s London with the reality of 1980’s Runcorn.
Questions of vulnerability, national identity, discrimination and national boundaries are raised in a new international production for our increasingly intolerant times.
On the death of my Grandmother, Olive in 1998, while sorting through her things, I came across a diary from 1944/5. The words written inside exploded everything we thought we knew about her and how my Father came into the world.
Her words conjured into life the daily struggle of a single woman seizing every moment as the bombs rained down on London town. When the bombs fell silent, Olive’s sudden loss of independence was unbearable.
An unplanned pregnancy, a Turkish Cypriot lover, a red headed US soldier and a monkey.
This is Olive’s story.
I’m not sure she would like me to tell it, but I’m going to anyway. Because in these futuristic post war days where words like feminism, immigration and populism divide us so brutally – it is my story too.
I must have a very strong streak of foreign blood in me because I’ve never in my life felt any love for my country. I find in this narrow world, I have to conform to a pattern. My spirit of adventure must be sacrificed. Ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted to travel to find a Utopia. Travel on and on till I found it. Well, dreams die hard.
– Olive Davis, London 1945
Performed and written by Rachel Karafistan
Inspired by a diary by Olive Davis
Direction: Kuba Pierzchalski
Music: Kuba Pierzchalski
Set: Kuba Pierzchalski
Props and Video Animation: Kamil Macejko
Drawings: Jo Johnston www.johnston-x-kröner.de
Premiere: 13th October 2018, Theater Haus Mitte, Berlin
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With help of
