Memory is fragile, garbage lasts forever.

In 2003, Constanza Macras and her company DorkyPark created the legendary piece Back to the Present, which premiered in the abandoned Jandorf department store in Mitte and then toured the world. Now, after more than 20 years, Back to the Present is back!

Jill Emerson, the iconic performer from DorkyPark’s earlier works, is back in the show, surrounded by all-new cast members. The characters find themselves in a casting of a reality show after a love break up. They try to be themselves absolute originals and at the same time become archetypes for a mass audience. Fetishized objects of former relationships accumulate like debris under a mountain of rubble.

Back to the Present deals with the desire to be completely in the present, which at the same time means living on top of yesterday’s garbage, settling in amongst discarded things or even existing under a mountain of rubble. But how do you live in a ruin? How do you recycle the things that don’t decay? Declarations of love, memorabilia, old ideas? Where do you put the idols of your youth, your favorite books, your cuddly toys? What memories do they trigger? And can memory – with all its failures and inaccuracies – be used to make present moments more fulfilling instead of more miserable?

Jill moved on, but somehow decided to come back to where she thinks it all started: Back to the Present.

 

A production by Constanza Macras | Dorky Park, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz Berlin.