Venue: Blood Moon Theatre (Potts Point NSW), Aug 22 – 30, 2018
Creator and Performer: Oleg Pupovac
Image by Roman Wolczak
Theatre review
In Oleg Pupovac’s one man show Me And My Mother, Singing, we are invited into a dreamlike consciousness, a waking meditation perhaps, about the creator’s Yugoslavian and Serbian roots. Stories of his past feature heavily, in this work about identity, demonstrating the inextricable relationship between our memories and daily existence. A new dawn always arrives, but we move into each day with personal histories that can be contained but is rarely erased.
Pupovac seeks refuge in art, reaching for his father in paintings of snow, and his mother in folk songs. Trauma is addressed indirectly, for a healing process that can never be hurried, and love is rekindled, if only in the realm of the soul, for a solace that is necessary but that can never completely assuage the experience of loss and longing. It is a satisfying presentation, with multimedia elements offering insight into the most intimate recesses of Pupovac’s mind, and the performer’s own warm charm facilitating an empathy in the audience, even when scenarios turn obscure.
In the creation of his own art, Pupovac manifests a closeness with loved ones, that in turn inspires an appreciation for the complex ways, in which each of us thinks of family and roots. People can seem so different from one another, but underneath the surface are inevitable points of connection that can only endorse our kinship. We like to think ourselves special, and even though individual trajectories are always unique, the infinity of our sameness can never be denied, including, sadly, our age-old propensity to divide.
Suzy Goes See 