Act II Scene III: A Memory of Her Father
from The Forgotten Kingdom

Note

In this video demonstration, the sand animation is a single, continuous video.However, in the stage production, the video is cut into 21 shorter segments. Each segment is triggered by the projections operator, once a particular moment in the musical score or script is reached. The segment plays and then holds, until the next cue. Each new segment picks up at the exact frame as the segment preceding it, to create the illusion of a single, smoothly flowing video, similar to the one you see below. This theatrical projections treatment results in unity and synchronization of projections and live performance while enabling variation in the pacing and delivery of each performance, like a play in which actors vary their delivery night-to night.

About this Scene

1914-17, 1943. The family’s Mediterranean village in the former Ottoman Empire.

The girl’s father was a scholar whose profession was interrupted by the outbreak of the first world war. He served in the Ottoman Navy, with distinction. But even his war hero’s status could not protect him from what came next. His village became part of a new nation state that perceived him as a threat, and that took away so much for which he’d fought.

Background:

Like many Ottoman Jews, the father fought in the Ottoman army during WWI. This was motivated in part by a widespread belief that the various Ottoman communities comprising the Ottoman Empire would be safer and more secure with a preservation of the Ottomanism stemming from the Tanzimat Reforms of 1839 and 1876. In an attempt to shore up the Ottoman Empire against the encroaching territorial threats of nationalist uprisings and European intervention, these reforms extended equal citizenship to Jews, Christians and Muslims of diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, at least rhetorically.

Ultimately, the Ottoman Empire could not prevail due to powerful forces and decisions that intensified cycles of violence. Arguably, one of of the most pivotal was the Ottoman deportation of a million Armenian citizens, a genocide that cemented the divides of ethnic nationalism. Other intensifications included a series of “population exchanges,” shuffling millions in the creation of new nation states and the inventions of new national identities along ethnic/linguistic lines.

Some of these new nation states would later ally with the Nazis. Together they “removed” ethnic groups that threatened their nascent national identities. This included Jews in communities like Salónica.

This scene is based on the story of a member of Guy’s family.

Acknowledgement

This demo was initially aired by the National Endowment for the Arts, in conjunction with a December 2017 episode of the NEA’s Art Works podcast about The Forgotten Kingdom.