My Dead – Barons Court Theatre
From growing up in Washington state, to her flat in South Ealing, Carolyn Hartvigsen has traversed the continents but the story she tells is of her ancestors, and the distance between her and them.
Walking onto the stage in wonder, Hartvigsen reels us in, with heightened intimacy in the old pub basement space of the theatre. She whips out a small tree, with photos of her family members attached to the leaves with herself as the tree trunk. She shares a carefully and truthfully woven patchwork of her personal life, her ancestors’ stories, and her reactions to them and how they help her reflect on her circumstances. With an unerring fear of death, she seeks understanding from her dead family, and how they lived.
As she discovers that one of her great grandfathers was polygamous and...