I Hate Memory

I Hate Memory! is an anti-musical which co-stars the Streets of New York and the Late 20th Century, and features appearances by family, film and fame, immigration, joy, theater and shame, dance floors, open doors, papaya ice cream and the Shah of Iran’s wife. It is a reluctant memoir served on bed of song and dirt, with a punk aperitif and Jimmy Carter for dessert.

The show combines stories, scenes, songs and immersive projections to follow Eszter from communist Hungary to late 1970s New York by way of her parents’ radical theater group, Squat Theater. When they arrive to a city on the verge of collapse in the late‘70’s, Eszter’s makeshift theater family become participants in an oft mythologized vibrant downtown Manhattan scene made up of a tribe of devout non-conformists; artists, musicians, filmmakers, hustlers, drag queens, performance artists, hip hop dancers, drug addicts and writers. This unconventional playground forms the backdrop to Eszter’s evolution from child to young adult.

The show tackle themes of immigration, celebrity, anonymity, sex, drugs, friendships, poverty, loss, love, art ,community, and our relationship to memory. The perspective is distinctly female, the concerns universally human, and politics is never far from view.