Balancing in Freedom — written and performed by Iddo Oberski and co-directed by Mark Kydd — is an incredibly personal, thought-provoking and inspiring story that simultaneously entertains and moves the audience. Multi-media elements are used to tell Oberski’s story of living with a disability and how discovering his ancestry’s connection to the Holocaust, although not his lived experience, has helped him navigate his way through his own grief. He draws on Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy of freedom, which impacted him greatly, particularly after the event that caused his disability.
Oberski first walks onto the stage with no extravagant light or sound display and places his walking sticks (what he goes on to later call his “helper legs”) each into a boot positioned at either side of the performance space. He then starts to recount details about his past and how his family, mostly from Amsterdam, lost their lives during the Holocaust. These details are incredibly emotive and as an audience member you are compelled by his composure, and the obscure ways in which his past is being told.
Among the deeply emotional moments, levity is brought to the performance through the aid of Oberski’s puppet and companion, Svjetlana. Oberski’s interactions with his companion also provide some of the most poignant conversations, particularly surrounding the notion of freedom and the questioning of why it is we make the choices we do. This curiosity is explored further via the magic trick Oberski performs with audience members, in which he asks people to choose from a selection of cards in a deck. It seems the audience are free to choose whatever cards they want, however a twist reflects how even when we think we are making choices entirely independently, there may be other forces at play influencing us.
There are several sections in the performance when Oberski pauses from telling his story and plays the flute — solos that are entirely improvised. When asked about the non-verbal and meditative sections of the performance during the Q&A, Oberski expresses how these sections are not about making the audience feel any certain way — he needed to create them for himself, as a way of processing his own grief.
Balancing in Freedom provides an impactful and inspiring story, from which Oberski’s main message refers to how life in and of itself is one big balancing act. We are always in a state of trying to find balance and that is what propels us through life — it is only in death when a true balance can be finally found. To think that grief and trauma is something that will be fully overcome is to be thinking of it in too black and white terms. Oberski demonstrates how life has no fixed answers and through exploration, positivity can be found again.
Balancing in Freedom is also showing at later dates this year in Cumbernauld and Edinburgh: https://www.balancinginfreedom.co.uk/events.html
Photo by Helena Krivankova, provided as press material
