Plays do not come any closer to home than Olivia Satchell’s piece MY NAME IS TRUDA VITZ  nor do they get any more authentic…

The horror of Nazism and the Holocaust continue to cast  long and deep shadows. Satchell explores the damage and the fall-out from this time on her own family. It is a play dedicated to the memory of her hero, her Czech-Viennese Jewish grandmother…Truda Vitz…whom she, unfortunately, never met. Truda passed away just two months before she was born.

Truda had a miserable start to life…With the rise of Nazism, at the  tender age of seventeen, she had to flee her home  country, and make a new life for herself in England. (A similar story to that of my very own mother, who at the age of fourteen, along with her classmates, as part of the British Government’s Kindertransport program, fled Cologne for London, saying goodbye to parents, many forever). Life was a struggle for Truda in her new country, where she was classified as an Enemy Alien. Some seven years on, she fell in love with her biology tutor, Geoff Satchell, became an English citizen, and gave birth to her eldest son, Paul Satchell, Olivia’s father. The family, later, migrated to Australia.

Olivia eloquently shares  the story of the three generations of her family through  the weaving together of narrative and music, the music coming from her mesmerising playing of her cello, featuring music by Faure, Dvorak, Elgar and Strauss. She showed herself to be a generous, from the heart performer.

The audience in the intimate Tap Gallery theatre applauded,as one, when a final cello movement brought her performance to an end. Olivia Satchell’s show runs for one final week at the Tap Gallery, Palmer Street, Darlinghurst, playing Wednesday 2nd July to Sunday 6th July.