Moira Roth: Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker, A Piece for Two Voices

Judah L. Magnes Museum , Berkeley, October 30, 2005

Adapted by Anna Muza and Moira Roth from texts by Moira Roth
Directed by Anna Muza
Performed by Anna Muza and Moira Roth

Anna Muza: Rachel Marker
Moira Roth: Moira Roth/Moira Marker

1. A Train Trip, October 2005
2. Berlin, Summer 2001
3. Rachel Marker, Berlin
4. Moira Roth, Rose Hacker and Alice Sommer
5. Alice Sommer's Century
6. Rachel Marker, Prague
7. Moira Marker, Prague, April 23, 2005
8. "The Blind Woman and Rachel Marker"
9. Rachel Marker and Her Book of Shadows
10, Alice Sommer and Rose Hacker, The Cyber Theater of Mneme and Melete, London, December 2002
11. "Rachel Marker and Her Book of Shadows"

Beginning:

ANNA AND MOIRA GO TO STAGE, STAND BY THEIR STOOLS AT THE TABLE, PICK UP THE TWO NEWSPAPERS, GERMAN AND BOSNIAN, HOLD THEM IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES AND READ - UNTIL THEY HEAR THE SOUND OF WATER (DANUBE), then LOWER NEWSPAPERS, AND SIT ON STOOLS.

Play begins …

Then later: **IMAGE #44: "RACHEL MARKER IN PRAGUE"

Note: show following three images – silent -- until Anna begins to speak with #47

**IMAGE #45: ROTHENBERGS IN SQUARE, PRAGUE

**IMAGE #46: DIANE ROTHENBERG LOOKING AT SCUPTURE, CHARLES BRIDGE

**IMAGE #47:CLOSEUP OF THE "WINDOW" DETAIL OF THE CHARLES BRIDGE SCULPTURE

ANNA:
In Prague's Old Town, Rachel Marker wrote each day at the same table by the far window - the waiter always guarded this space for her.

It was at this table on June 12th , 1924, the day after Kafka's funeral, that she began to write her daily letters to Kafka.

Each evening the waiter would collect these, storing them in a suitcase that had once belonged to Kafka.

Years later she had sat by this window for the last time on the day after war was declared on September 3rd of 1939.

**IMAGE #48: PRAGUE JEWISH CEMETERY

In her letter to Kafka of that day, she told him that "Two days before, the Nazis had invaded Poland, and today war has been declared on Germany by Britain and France. I have decided to leave Prague.

"In this last letter that she was ever to write to Kafka, she included the draft of the play that she had just started to write about the Golem and the Angel of Death.

She told him too that she had always been inspired by something he had once stated:

"Writing is a form of prayer. Even if no redemption comes, I still want to be worthy of every moment."

MOIRA:
"Writing is a form of prayer. Even if no redemption comes, I still want to be worthy of every moment."

**IMAGE #49: "MOIRA MARKER, PRAGUE, APRIL 23, 2005"

I, Moira Marker, now sit at Rachel Marker's table in Prague's Old Town nd write.

Now I look out of the window of the café, instead of her.

It is Saturday morning, April 23rd, 2005, and I have brought a small faded photograph to the café, together with a magnifying glass that once (I am told) had belonged to Rachel Marker.

Anna and Moira

Anna picks up photo of Rose and father, holds it up for Moira…Moira picks up the magnifying glass.

**IMAGE #50: 'ROSE HACKER AND HER FATHER, BERLIN, 1929

A fashionable couple, a young woman and an older man, are walking in a city.

He is wearing a bowler hat, and his hands are in his pockets, and she is in a tightly fitting, 1920s hat, and fur-collared, loose coat.

On the back of the faded photograph, in elegant handwriting, the caption reads "Me and My Father, Berlin, 1929.

"Two Czech Jews in Berlin in 1929.

Sitting in this Prague café in 2005, I begin to write a story, "The Blind Woman and Rachel Marker."

NOTE. In an introduction to the project as a whole, Moira Roth writes: “Begun in 2001, ‘Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker’ is a fragmented narrative about a fictional Czech Jew, a poet and playwright, who lives through the 20th century. After the 1924 death of the Czech writer Franz Kafka, Rachel Marker writes to him daily about her own writings, experiences and thoughts, and describes to him events in current European history, especially the rise of fascism. In the fall of 1939, she flees to Paris after the German invasion of Prague, and finally turns up in Berlin after World War II, where she takes photographs every day of the city’s shadows.” The work has continued to the present in both performance & narrative versions, some of which can be found on her web site at moiraroth.com.