A duet for live body and film that maps a modern Cordelia and her ‘Lear-like father’ onto the bones of Shakespeare’s Lear and his silent daughter. Deborah Leiser-Moore returns to La Mama after 12 years with her solo performance Cordelia, Mein Kind.
Cordelia, Mein Kind is a highly personal and intimate performance work based around the figure of King Lear’s youngest daughter, Cordelia, and Deborah’s own family history as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. It is a bold response to a historical legacy that has haunted her for years and to a past that was never spoken about.
By intertwining elements from Shakespeare’s King Lear, her own father’s story – he was a Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivor living in ‘exile’ in Melbourne – and the 1934 film of the Yiddish King Lear (which has a happy ending!), Deborah, together with celebrated director, Meredith Rogers, have created a deep reflection on one of the most tragic female figures to ever inhabit the stage.
Deborah is renowned for making innovative and visually arresting performance works that have toured nationally and internationally. They have been acclaimed by reviewers, audiences and critics alike for the way in which they “confront major dilemmas of our time in accessible and emotionally moving texts that leaves spectators pondering larger issues for a long time after the performance” (Peta Tait).
Cordelia, Mein Kind has toured to the Festiwal Szekspirowski (Poland), Marsh Theater (San Francisco), Theater J (Washington DC) and Brisbane Festival, finally hitting Melbourne as part of La Mama’s Celebrating Women Festival 2014.
Cordelia, Mein Kind
La Mama Theatre, 205 Faraday Street, Carlton
Season: 16 – 20 July 2014
Bookings: (03) 9347 6142 or online at: www.lamama.com.au
For more information, visit: www.deborahleisermoore.com for details.
Image: Deborah Leiser-Moore in Cordelia, Mein Kind – photo by Greg Goodale