Iddo Oberski on Trauma, Time and Balancing in Freedom

“Having it as a slow project in the background has kept me focused and sane in a world that sometimes seems to have gone mad,” reflects Iddo Oberski. He is speaking ahead of the final performance of his one-man show, Balancing in Freedom, which concludes its year-long run at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on November 20th.

For a production navigating the heavy intersections of his family’s Holocaust history, his post-stroke physical reality, and Rudolf Steiner’s philosophies, Oberski’s approach has been an act of necessary radicalism. He has adopted a ‘slow touring’ model, spacing just eight performances across the entire year. It is a pacing that accommodates his access requirements while mirroring the deep, meditative nature of the work itself. I must confess to a certain irony here: despite this production gently touring across the central belt for the better part of a year, and despite it earning the moniker of a “one-man philosophical cabaret” from critics like The Herald‘s Neil Cooper, it is a show that has, until now, eluded my own schedule.

Oberski, a former academic and magician, notes that his only prior experience of consecutive performance dates came during his secondary school years. “I’ve never toured so don’t know what that’s like, but can imagine how exhausting it must be to travel around and be on a different stage every other night,” he admits. The slow model for Balancing in Freedom emerged organically over a decade of marination and early development meetings with director Mark Kydd, eventually culminating in a rhythm of roughly one performance every month or two.

“This approach has worked really well for me because of my disability—limited mobility and energy—and because I don’t have the pressure of trying to make a living from my art,” Oberski explains. It is a practical necessity that perfectly mirrors the thematic core of the work. “It’s consistent with the pace of the piece itself which explores, amongst other things, alternative ways of knowing, being and doing that draw on an understanding of the human being as a spiritual being.”

Consequently, the spacing affords him a singular focus. “Doing a ‘slow tour’ allows me to be fully present on stage, without having to spread my energy across a run of shows. I love that each performance stands on its own and I can give it everything I’ve got on that day.”

The physical toll, however, remains immense. “While immediately after a performance I tend to feel energised, the next day I am usually exhausted. I simply could not do another performance. So, after each performance I just let it all go. I rest, I reflect, go back into my day-to-day life.” Between dates, the production recedes into the background until a week or two before the next staging, when he reconnects with the script and schedules rehearsals based strictly on his physical capacity.

“Having it as a slow project in the background has kept me focused and sane in a world that sometimes seems to have gone mad,” reflects Iddo Oberski.“

Alternative Ways of Knowing

At the core of Balancing in Freedom is an attempt to synthesise profoundly disparate strands of Oberski’s life. He uses Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom as a bridge between his lived experience of a stroke in 2009 and the inherited trauma of the Holocaust. Through Steiner’s lens of repeated earth lives, Oberski suggests he is able to contextualise these events, opening up the space to interrogate the connections between his family’s history and his own disability.

**Photo from show credit Daniel Abercrombie**

“They have all had a major impact on me, during different life stages, in challenging as well as really beautiful and developmental ways,” he says of these three central themes. “Finding and making connections between different threads of my life… helps me to make some sense of those experiences.”

Crucial to navigating this weighty material is Svjetlana, a stick-puppet sidekick who serves as both a philosophical sounding board and a vital release valve. Yet, Oberski bristles mildly at the term ‘puppet’.

“When I found Svjetlana, it was immediately clear to me that she isn’t a puppet. She radiates light, she’s utterly beautiful, but fierce and straight-talking,” he says. Because she is not human, she does not buy into his limited perspective or earthly struggles. “She sees how we humans often get our knickers in a twist, and tends to find this both bemusing and amusing. She calls me out on it… In that, she can be quite irreverent towards difficult material and thereby makes sure that I don’t lose myself in grief or pessimism. She helps me to see beauty and mystery. She helps me to feel gratitude and joy at the gift of being alive. Without her, Balancing in Freedom would probably be unbearable to witness and to perform.”

This dynamic brings unexpected levity to the production. Oberski recalls the first staging, noting the enthralling experience of hearing unplanned laughter from the audience. There are no traditional punchlines, he insists, but rather changes in perspective that provoke a humorous reaction, breaking the tension and allowing audiences to laugh despite the bleakest aspects of the subject matter.

“When I found Svjetlana, it was immediately clear to me that she isn’t a puppet. She radiates light, she’s utterly beautiful, but fierce and straight-talking,” he says.

Evolving the Physical Dynamic

The visual and auditory landscape of the show is dense, incorporating flute music, visual art, poetry, and magic. For the final date on November 20th, a new layer is added with British Sign Language interpretation by Rachel Amey. Integrating this has changed the physical dynamic on stage, requiring careful choreography to match the production’s unhurried pace.

“There is quite a lot of text in it, so in some ways it’s a lot of work for the interpreter,” Oberski notes. “On the other hand, the pace is quite slow and steady, with pauses and moments of reflection. That gives everyone time to catch our breath.”

Rather than having Amey follow him centre stage, she is seated to the side, synchronising her movements to stand when Oberski stands and sit when he sits. “I had to get used to that, because it’s very different being on stage with someone else moving… The signing just adds another dimension. I feel that sign language fits well into this offering of different channels of communication.”

As the year-long endeavour concludes, Oberski reflects on how the piece has calcified from a sequence of memorised parts into a single “living organism,” bringing both ease and the sudden danger of forgetting lines due to sheer familiarity. There is also the enduring psychological challenge of repeatedly engaging with profound loss.

“There are aspects of the piece that are challenging to revisit over and over again,” he admits. “How can I make sure that I don’t lose myself in the repeated memories of the experience and don’t get retraumatised? I have moments between performances where it suddenly hits me again how deeply painful those experiences were. There’s an ongoing journey in the realm of feeling with this piece that I am deeply grateful for.”

Initially disheartened by a modest audience of ten to twelve people at an early date in Cumbernauld, Oberski quickly recognised that numbers were secondary to the intimate reality of the work. The slow tour has proven to be the right call, resulting in a digital recording of the production that will preserve it beyond November.

“I realised that it is not about getting Balancing in Freedom in front of as many people as possible. The right people will come at the right time,” he concludes. “It feels important to perform… It’s an honouring of the stories and the people, a commitment to myself and a commitment to the world. Because I love doing it.”

Featured Image: Main Image Helena Krivankova, Helshka Creative Media