“In search of Youkali” – Multimedia concert staged with music by Kurt Weil

This concert (September 25, 7.00 p.m., ISEG, Lisbon; and September 26, 9.00 p.m., Parque dos Poetas, Oeiras) features Alexandra Bernardo, Tânia Valente (Research Group for the Study of Music, Critical Theory and Communication) and Ana Jacobetty, as well as staging and multimedia video by Larissa Vereza.

“In Search of Youkali” narrates the saga of two women — Maria Weill and Maria Gerron — whose life stories are intertwined with those of composer Kurt Weill and actor, director, and singer Kurt Gerron. Both live in Germany during the Roaring Twenties, witness the revolution in musical theatre brought about by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill, and collaborate as singers in “The Threepenny Opera”. From the 1930s onwards, they fall victim to the growing persecution and deprivation of rights suffered by the Jewish people. They therefore sought refuge in Paris. Here, Maria Weill felt uncomfortable and experienced heartbreak (which Weill himself had suffered). Maria Gerron turned more to cinema, where she found work. However, their peaceful exile would be short-lived, with the German conquest of Paris in 1940. Like many Jews, Maria Weill managed to flee to the USA, from where she never returned. Maria Gerron found work in the Netherlands, until she was caught by the Nazis and taken to Theresienstadt. M. Weill was enchanted by the poetry of Walt Whitman and thought about what was happening in Europe. Maria Gerron tries to survive Theresienstadt and is meanwhile invited by the Nazis to make a film in which Theresienstadt would be portrayed as a paradise, a ‘Youkali’. But Youkali is just a dream, a fantasy that will never exist. After the film, eleven trains would leave Theresienstadt for Auschwitz, taking an entire generation of artists and intellectuals. M. Gerron will board the eleventh…