memory habit

I can’t stop remembering; I don’t know if I would be what I am if I weren’t remembering. But I don’t know what I’m remembering. It’s just a reflex, like the haphazard breathing of a lungfish. It’s just a memory habit.

Performed by two unreliable narrators, Memory Habit is a dual solo about inter-generational trauma: forgotten history, emerging (epi)genetic science, and how cultures attempt to survive and heal in the face of persistent haunting. If we are created by our ghosts, how are we to survive them? Is anyone more than a sum of their inheritance? Who do we decide has the right to their pain?

I wrote and directed this play, composed and designed the sound, and performed the score live.

Written and directed by Eben Hoffer
Set by Carey Xu
Lights by Joy Zhang
Media by Sean Leo
Costumes by Maggie McGrann
Sound by Eben Hoffer
Performed by Essence Stiggers and Matthew Kirschner