Rachel und ich is a performance about a twenty-year transatlantic friendship, memory and the aftermath of the Holocaust for the so-called third generation.

Theater maker Lulu Obermayer and therapist and performer Rachel Troy met in 2005 at the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, where they studied acting and developed a close friendship. Obermayer grew up in Munich and has German ancestors, while Troy’s Romanian-Hungarian-Jewish grandparents and Auschwitz survivors emigrated to the USA in 1947. 

In their first artistic collaboration, Rachel Troy and Lulu Obermayer combine Lee Strasberg’s method acting, therapeutic techniques, parlor games and storytelling to address the aftermath of historical trauma and intergenerational narratives. The performance explores the interstices of consciousness, time and language that shape the understanding of history and personal and cultural identity. Through rituals and symbolic elements, Troy and Obermayer enact their relationship and reflect on the possibilities and limits of compassion, memory and the aftermath of history. They use the theater for a lively practice of remembrance culture – as a place where personal and political dimensions meet and an intense confrontation with the past and present can be experienced.