I sat down writer Noga Flaishon to find out more about Memoriam coming to Southwark Playhouse Borough this October.

Can you tell me a little about your show and what audiences can expect?

Memoriam is a science fiction play about remembrance, the commodification of trauma, and the intersection of identity and technology. In the near future (or an alternative present) tech giant Memoriam has developed technology that extracts human memories and makes them available for a wider audience to experience through a subscription service.

Rachel is a buyer for Memoriam, tasked by the company with acquiring the memories of her grandmother – the last Holocaust survivor. Memoriam blends science fiction and a ‘Black Mirror’-esque narrative with lots of humour and heart to explore how remembrance becomes an industry, and the unnerving popularity of Holocaust media.

It’s very funny, a bit bleak, and has a few jokes likely to make Gentiles squirm a little—which are also my favourite jokes in the play.

What drew you to this specific story?

I’ve always been a huge sci-fi fan. I read the Silver Age stuff as a teenager and never fully left the genre. In playwriting, it’s useful because it lets you turn up the dial on an existing question or dilemma, push it to an extreme, and look at it properly.

I started writing Memoriam after two incidents: Falsettogate, when a 2019 production of the very Jewish musical Falsettos was staged with no Jewish creatives, and the anti-vax protests, where I saw protesters wearing yellow stars and comparing their made-up ‘persecution’ to the very real persecution in Nazi Germany. I found both stories insulting, but they piqued my interest. I suddenly noticed how Jewish narratives are preserved almost despite their Jewish characters. They like our stories… they can really take or leave us, though. The science fiction element allowed me to take the conundrum further: what happens when a tech company devoted exclusively to entertainment wants ownership of a piece of generational trauma?

What has been the biggest challenge in bringing this production to life?

Time and money… It’s the way of things. You can have the best play you could possibly write, a perfect team, and a flawless cast, but if no theatre has a slot for you and there’s no money coming in, you can’t do it.

The biggest challenge with staging Memoriam was simply finding a stage. I couldn’t be happier that we found one at Southwark. It’s one of the first venues I fell in love with when I moved to London in 2014. The SW team is incredible, and they take great care of us.

How does the design of your show (set, sound, or lighting) impact the presentation of your story?

We went for a very clean design. The memory sequences took a lot of exploration with music and lighting to create the ethereal, ‘beyond reality’ state I was after. The idea is that the ‘real’ experiences Memoriam markets are actually reality: fantastical, perfect, and full of internal narrative sense in a way real memories could never be.

If you could sum up the show in one word or phrase, what would it be and why?

Jewish science fiction. Now, there’s a genre you don’t see every day.

Memoriam runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough, London, from 22 October to 21 November. Tickets are available at https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/memoriam/