Created with teenage students in Lesvos, The Memory of Water brings oral histories and personal experiences to the stage. Through documentary theatre, a new generation explores the island’s Asia Minor refugee heritage, connecting inherited memories with contemporary experiences of displacement and belonging.
Photography: Photography: Gerasimos Mavrommatis
Dates & availability
Past appearances
(1)
Past appearance
7 August 2022
All of Greece One Culture
Mytilene Castle
Mytilene, Greece
Premiere
Project Description
Based on oral history and the use of experiential-biographical material, ‘The Memory of Water’ focuses on the value of memory and the importance of its preservation for our historical and cultural cohesion and continuity, highlighting traces of the refugee identity of the island of Lesvos through the eyes of the new generation.
The play was created during a documentary theatre workshop with the participation of teenage students from the Mytilene Standard High School of the University of the Aegean.
The teenagers, aged 15-17, co-wrote the script and participated in the performance as “experiential performers”. Using the methodology of ethnographic forms (auto-ethnography and in-home ethnography), the teenagers experimented with their own autobiographies and research material to become part of a larger narrative about the identity and cultural footprint of Asia Minor refugees, grafting it with their reflections and experiences of the contemporary refugee experience.
