In life’s journey, mixed identities can offer a richness in world views, experiences and empathy, but at the same time can complicate how we see ourselves.
This conflict is explored in Pieces of a Man – a one-man show in which writer David Labi presents an intimate depiction of his father Marcello – an Italian jew of Libyan extraction who was taken as a child by the Nazis and put into a concentration camp.
UK-born storyteller David Labi has made a career working with cause-driven organisations to help them engage with the public through workshops and stories, having also worked in TV, film and branding. But following his father’s death, Labi decided to revisit his own father’s story after making a documentary in Argentina searching for a mysterious woman living in Patagonia who was rumoured to be a Holocaust survivor.
“On some level, I felt I'd "dealt" with his complex legacy. But some years later I was living in Berlin and suffering from depression and paralysis in life. I realised I needed to explore my father's story properly so that I could move forward in life,” Labi told The Brussels Times.
In his search for answers, Labi travelled to Israel, London and Rome and spoke with family and friends: “I also wanted to talk to people who knew him while they were still around.”
David and his father in Italy. Credit: David Labi
Labi’s father was interned in various camps including the notorious concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany, where Anne Frank and many others died. After the war, he settled in Israel with his family but moved when he was in his mid-20s to the UK, where he met Labi’s mother in London and remained there.
How did his experience as a child in a concentration camp shape Labi’s father, and how did this affect Labi’s understanding of himself and his father? Pieces of a Man delves deep into the theory of intergenerational trauma – the passing down from generation to generation the oppressive and traumatic effects of a historical event. Like many of the war and post-war generations, most in Europe are still living with these complex effects, mostly unaware. Within the Jewish community in particular, collective trauma from the Holocaust has shaped the group’s collective memory and sense of identity.
“In the show, I go on a long and complicated journey to try to properly understand my father and how he was the way he was. This is directly tied to my own journey of freeing myself from destructive behaviours so that I can be settled and happy in life.” And how do these shared but sometimes conflicting aspects of a person’s life reconcile into a compelling story we can say about ourselves? Labi says that the title Pieces of a Man reflects the way we assemble our ideas of people from fragments.
Credit: Victoriano Moreno, courtesy of Mestizo Arts Platform
The artist hopes the play might inspire others to do the same with their own stories and heritage. After his performance, many approach him to share very personal stories about their families. "Stories are what make us human and we have the power to tell whatever stories we like about ourselves. Telling a story performatively like this is a way of adapting your own notion of yourself.”
Labi has performed the English-language Pieces of a Man seven times in Belgium and says the reaction has been wonderful. “I have had to make the language a little simpler and slow down a bit as I'm performing for people whose first language is not English. But I feel that people respond well to a story perhaps different from what they are used to. At the same time its themes of intergenerational trauma, and how to deal with a complicated parent, are quite universal.”
David Labi will perform 'Pieces of a Man' at Pianofabriek in Brussels on Thursday 27 April at 20:00. It is a co-production with Antwerp-based theatre company MarthaTentatief, with Johan Petit as coach, and supported by the Mestizo Arts Platform.
