uhhuh dance return with their most challenging performance to date. Following the success of The Son, The Lover and The Holy Spin and Albedo, Cell is based on real events of 1949. While fleeing Germany Josef Mengele, the most notorious Nazi doctor, was imprisoned in Genoa for vagrancy and forced to share a cell with a disabled street musician who, only a few years earlier, he would have selected for experiments or consigned to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Such doctors had already led Hitler’s eugenics programme during the 1930’s, organizing the murder of hundreds of thousands of disabled people and preparing the psychological and technological ground for the genocide of the Holocaust.
Cell explores the immense human capacity to create and to destroy; how, step-by-step, people in any time or place can come to accept the unthinkable.
Extracts from an interview with the cast:
What made you decide to take on this subject matter?
Jon Andy came to us with an idea for a performance based on Mengele. He described it as a theatrical gift because this relationship, these two very different people, two opposites if you like, trapped in a cell, allows us to really explore what it means to be human. I was very excited about this and Sarah and I immediately started to make plans.
So, are you playing the street musician?
Jon Very interesting question – the answer is yes and no. We decided early on to do this the hard way. Rather than take the simple approach of dividing up roles, we took the idea and abstracted it, moved it away from simple characterisation. We wanted to explore the different sides that make up a person, that allow a Doctor to become a mass murderer.
So you each play the doctor and the street musician?
Jodie Yes, throughout the piece we change roles many times, bringing to the characters our own take on different sides of their persona.
What is it like for you personally, working on this material?
Jodie When I first found out what we were doing I was worried that it might be really hard for me to deal with such horrific things, especially if we were just sensationalizing or exploiting this history. But we are working on it in a way that explores causes and connections – particularly connections with today. It is still hard at times but I know how important it is that this work is seen by people.
uhhuh dance is an inclusive dance company passionately committed to individual creative expression. The company displays a desire and dedication to create innovative dance that raises debate and challenges the mind.
Tour dates – September 26 – November 22, 2009
