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Other Inland Empires

Portland Playhouse
Portland, OR

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Wednesday Jun 26, 2019 7:30 PM - Sunday Jun 30, 2019 5:00 PM | $10.00 - $40.00

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Other Inland Empires

When writer/director Julie Hammond learned that Gidget, the quintessential California girl and 1950's spark of a global surf boom, was really the Jewish daughter of Austro-Hungarian refugees, she began to imagine events in reverse. What would happen if she, a California-born Jew, went to Central Europe to learn to surf?

Armed with an audio recorder and faith in sun and waves, Hammond travelled east in a quest to weave her California surf-bum family with her grandmother's Holocaust survival, and the hope to discover the details of her family story. A series of stranger-than-fiction eventsfrom discovering surf culture in a landlocked country to a wakeboarding accident that leads to a Slovakian hospitalopen the door to her grandmother's moving tale of survival, and lays the ground for this new play.

Get ready for a world in which the Holocaust brushes up against inflatable seagulls, a lost tooth holds hands with a lost earring, and palm trees slow dance with identity politics.

Written and directed by: Julie Hammond
Performed by: Matthew Ariaratnam, Bana Biltaji, Dominique Hat, Stephanie Wong
Sound Design: Matthew Ariaratnam
Lighting Design: Gillian Hanemayer
Scenic Design: Robert Leveroos
Dramaturg/Expert Jew: Caroline Liffmann

The Portland premiere of Other Inland Empires is made possible in part by Ronni Lacroute, community sponsor Hand2Mouth Theatre, and the support of generous individual donors.