Lorna Eleonora Vassiliades brings her show The Suitcase: Losing Famagusta to Camden Fringe this summer.
“What do you take with you when forced to leave your home because of war? Which items and memories do you pack?
Expect a deeply moving solo theatre show about personal and collective trauma, that is a call for justice and peace for all.”
I asked Lorna to tell us more about the show and her journey as an older writer/performer.
Where: Theatro Technis
When: 13-15 Aug, 7.30pm
Ticket link: https://camdenfringe.com/events/the-suitcase/
What’s the best thing about being included in Camden Fringe?
Being part of a festival that people in and around London can come to without having to book train fares and expensive accommodation is exciting.
It’s important particularly for a show like mine about the immigrant and refugee experience, as people from ethnic minorities can come with family members who may also have experienced racism or been through displacement.
Michelle and Zena who run the Camden Fringe Festival are dedicated and supportive, so it feels like you’re really looked after and part of something bigger.
When you make work on your own and then have to put it on yourself, you have to generate an interest just around your own show, whereas being part of a festival is so much more fun because of all the energy around it.
You were a child refugee, and The Suitcase is inspired by that experience. Tell me a bit more about the show!
It’s as much a diaspora story as a refugee one, beginning with my parents coming here from the former British Colony of Cyprus just as the island gained independence.
I describe my early years growing up alone, miserable, and bullied in Essex and having to learn Greek because my parents planned to return to Famagusta, Cyprus.
When I get to Cyprus in the show I am that excited child again and there’s a lot of music, dancing and audience interaction to help me recreate how happy I felt there.
Throughout the show I gradually unpack my memories from the Suitcase leading to the tragic events of 1974 when I have to pack the suitcase of memories.
I’ll be performing on 13 August, the day we had to leave our home, and 14 and 15 August when we realised we weren’t going back. It will be very emotional, but I felt I wanted to mark the 50 years of loss and pain with a (theatre) act of grieving and resistance.
I started a diary on the day of the Greek Junta’s coup on 15 July 1974 (which triggered the Turkish invasion), so my 12-year-old writer’s words will feature in the show.
I did a free one-night trial last year at Theatro Technis, on 20 July, the anniversary of the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus, a very painful day, and one I always spend on my own or with family/friends who went through the tragic events.
I was overwhelmed by the positive response from both Cypriots and non-Cypriots who wanted to discuss the issues that came up.
That’s why in developing the show for this year there’s an after-show Q&A (14th August), and an accompanying exhibition that audiences can view before/after.
Was it an easy task to take such personal experiences and turn them into drama?
The short answer is NO!
I was very resistant to making autobiographical work. I did an MSc in Creative Arts and Mental Health at Queen Mary University of London where we were steered to make autobiographical work, but I created a fictional character to tackle the refugee experience.
When I started a drama PhD, my supervisor gently suggested I ‘do a little something autobiographical’. I took an autobiographical theatre course with Hannah Moss, artistic director of On The Run and realised that even though I prefer fiction, I have something to say that needs to be said autobiographically.
I feel compelled to tell a story that others have experienced too but may not be able to tell their families and friends because it’s too painful. I’ve been there.
The themes I tackle in The Suitcase are racist bullying, and state bullying in the form of invasion, war, displacement. Both are traumatic issues for me to confront. And I absolutely didn’t want to make a miserable show.
I’m working hard with the director Pedro Perez Rothstein and the assistant director/choreographer Despoina Christianoudi to create a show that is also about resilience and hope, and that leads to dialogue.
You are staging an exhibition of items from your personal archive in Theatro Technis to accompany the play. What did you decide to include?
I’m including everything I have that we took on the day we had to leave our home, and that’s not very much at all.
In fact I asked the curator, Eleni Chasioti, if I had enough to exhibit, and she assured me it’s not the amount but what we took in those moments when we had to leave that is important.
There’s my mother’s embroidery and my own, and a little plastic bag with threads from the shop that sold embroidery items. I have stamp albums, some books, a doll, and my school essays and diaries.
There’s the suitcase itself and the dress my mother was wearing on the day we left [featured in the image for the show].
One of my favourite items is the Jackie pocket diary. Jackie was the girls’ magazine we all read in the early 70s and the magazine I wanted to write for.
Years later, even though Jackie magazine didn’t exist, I started off my freelance journalism career writing for young women’s magazines before moving onto newspapers and glossy magazines.
You are an older artist who hasn’t performed that much previously. How did you get to this point, and what’s your background?
My background is a career in journalism. At one point when I worked full time for Time Out magazine as the lifestyle editor.
I confided in veteran arts journalist Donald Hutera (who worked on the magazine periodically). I told him that when I grew up I wanted to do a one woman show.
In 2014 when he began curating a series of festivals under the banner Go Live, he reminded me of this and invited me to write and perform. By this stage I’d been shortlisted for the Verity Bargate and had done a one-year attachment programme at Soho Theatre.
I’ve spent the past ten years since that first Go Live performance slowly training, and performing on a small scale wherever opportunities came up. Learning as well as failing have been instrumental in developing my craft and finding my way, whilst working and more recently studying part-time as well.
I’ve transitioned from journalism to PhD researcher and theatre-maker which was never in my life plan!
Follow Lorna on Twitter or Instagram.