We Keep Coming Back is a performance work deconstructing Polish Jewish narratives
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Michael Rubenfeld is a theatre artist living in Toronto. He has a complicated relationship with his mother Mary who was born in Sweden to Jewish refugees from Poland. No one in his family identifies as Polish or Swedish. Michael begins to question his feelings of detachment from his mother, from Jewishness, from Poland. Are the feelings of disconnect all connected? Can a mother and son find a way back to each other by going back to their roots and by making a play about it? How doesPoland play into this personal quest? They set off to Poland with director Sarah Garton Stanley and a Polish writer/filmmaker Katka Reszke, who happens to be on an identity quest of her own. In a multimedia, sonically-driven presentation, Michael comes together on stage with Mary and Katka to tell and retell the story of their trip replete with serendipitous discoveries, faulty memory, charged interactions, unexpected humour, the shadows of war, and the promise of writing a new narrative. |
