'Some people leave, some people cry': The Factory brings home the horror of Auschwitz
In a dank, airless room beneath Edinburgh's Pleasance Courtyard, I am waiting to die. Beside me, a naked woman is whispering her boyfriend's name. A naked man is crying out that he is scared. Another naked man is standing tall, singing the Hatikva, a Jewish prayer.
This is The Factory, a production by Badac Theatre Company that recreates the last hour in the life of prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It begins outside a corrugated iron wall, with the audience lined up in pairs beside three actors in striped sackcloth. It continues inside, through a succession of dark, dusty underground rooms, as a guard wielding a metal pole snarls at both actors and audience to move, stop, strip (although here, only the actors are expected to obey), and, finally, await their death.
This is less theatre than direct, visceral experience - which was the aim of Badac's director, Steve Lambert. "There's no distance between audience and actors," he says. Neither is there much by way of script: what words there are - "move", "why?", "I'm scared" - are as basic and stripped back as the prisoners themselves. "The camp guards aimed to disarm and disorientate, and take away people's right to ask questions," says Lambert. "What you're left with are bullets of language."..
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This is The Factory, a production by Badac Theatre Company that recreates the last hour in the life of prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It begins outside a corrugated iron wall, with the audience lined up in pairs beside three actors in striped sackcloth. It continues inside, through a succession of dark, dusty underground rooms, as a guard wielding a metal pole snarls at both actors and audience to move, stop, strip (although here, only the actors are expected to obey), and, finally, await their death.
This is less theatre than direct, visceral experience - which was the aim of Badac's director, Steve Lambert. "There's no distance between audience and actors," he says. Neither is there much by way of script: what words there are - "move", "why?", "I'm scared" - are as basic and stripped back as the prisoners themselves. "The camp guards aimed to disarm and disorientate, and take away people's right to ask questions," says Lambert. "What you're left with are bullets of language."..