May 30

Magda Toffler, or An Essay on Silence

Venue: Small Theatre
Address: 11 Abovyan St.
Time: 19:00
Price: 3000 AMD
Language: English, with Armenian subtitles

October 1943: Heinrich Himmler gathers all the Gauleiters of the Reich in the Polish city of Poznań to inform them of the regime’s decision to completely exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. However, before beginning, he places two phonographs in front of the audience to make two reference recordings of the speech. Contrary to common belief, it is not Himmler’s words that are meant to be recorded, but the silence in the room.

In Magda Toffler — the second work in which Boris Nikitin appears on stage himself (the first was presented at FIT in 2019) — he delves into the hidden layers of twentieth-century European history. Here, the stage is reduced to a minimum: a chair, a manuscript, and the performer himself.

Nikitin’s works are known for blurring the boundaries between theatre and performance, between document and propaganda. In this piece, he turns to the past of his grandmother, Magda Toffler, whose Jewish origin and the fact that she lived in hiding were only discovered after her death. What emerges is a biographical text that immerses itself in forgotten memories, calls forth the silence of the past, and intertwines personal and collective history, reflection and emotion.

Concept, text, performance: Boris Nikitin
Producer: Annette Hardegen
Artistic consultants: Annette Hardegen, Matthias Meppelink
Produced by: steirischer herbst ’22, Staatstheater Nürnberg, It’s The Real Thing Studios
Co-production: Kaserne Basel, Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, Theatre Vidy Lausanne, HAU – Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Frascati Amsterdam, Theater Chur, Omanut

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