Niusia was a Holocaust survivor. Her granddaughter, Beth, only remembers an angry, dying woman. She’s ready to learn her stories, but what she discovers is all the questions she didn’t know existed and wasn’t allowed to ask. Through NIUSIA, Beth weaves together memories, handed-down stories, and interviews to examine the precarity of identity and the haphazard cultural legacy that second, third, and fourth-generation immigrants are handed. It asks: What does remembrance look like when all I remember is the space where questions should go?
Would you mind giving us a brief insight into what your show/event/performance is?
Howdy! Absolutely! It’s a one-woman verbatim work all about my grandmother, her time in the war, and how her legacy persists.
How do you honour the legacy of a woman you hardly knew?…and didn’t really like?
NIUSIA is the true and remarkable story of Niusia–a survivor of the holocaust–and the unexpected journey her granddaughter takes to understand her, and consequently herself.
NIUSIA is a love letter to family, and reckons with the effects of intergenerational trauma. It is a poignant illustration of the special, if not sometimes-difficult, relationships that exist between grandmother-mother-granddaughter, and the impact of trauma on these relationships. It is a true, moving, and beautifully told story. Protagonist Beth masterfully weaves the historical with the personal, the traumatic with the hilarious, and takes the audience on a personal journey of self-discovery, cultural euphoria, and connection to the past. The show tackles very dark material with grace, levity, and a healthy dose of Jewish gallows humour. The audience is invited to laugh along with Beth as she learns that laughter is the only way to survive the unsurvivable.
Tell us about the creative team and the process involved?
I brought the first sketches of NIUSIA to director and co-creator Kat Yates back in 2019. I wanted to write a show about my nana—who survived Auschwitz, migrated to Australia, and somehow became the sharp-tongued woman I begged my mum not to visit. Kat was instantly hooked, and we spent the next few years testing out sketches of writing, building vignettes, and puzzling through memories.
In early 2023, we assembled our dream team: Jack Burmeister (sound), Sidney Younger (lights), Samantha Hastings (set/costume), Tiah Bullock (stage/production management), and Ryan Stewart (producer). A first reading made one thing clear: something vital was missing. Enter my mum, Susie. Her voice—funny, fiery, and deeply insightful—brought the whole story into focus.
From there, the process became a collage of my mum’s interview, devised scenes, and rewrites. Kat and I built scenes from these fragments and watched the show take shape. It’s been messy, intimate, and entirely collaborative. Every element of the work has grown out of that process, and the whole team has played such crucial roles in bringing the work to life.
How does it feel coming to the Fringe?
This is my first time at the Edinburgh Fringe! Back in 2019, when I first approached Kat Yates about developing this work, we quietly dreamed of one day bringing NIUSIA here. To now be returning with this story to Europe—especially in 2025, marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz—feels deeply significant. In a time when the number of people violently displaced by war continues to rise, sharing this story feels more urgent than ever. It’s a huge honour to bring NIUSIA to international audiences. I’m also buzzing to see other work, connect with artists from around the world, explore opportunities to keep the story growing, and create space for the kinds of conversations this story was always meant to spark.
With shows from all over the world at the Fringe, what sets yours apart?
2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz—and NIUSIA arrives at a moment when only a handful of Holocaust survivors remain, while yet another genocide unfolds before our eyes. This show is anti-war, fiercely personal, and rooted in the ongoing experience of being the granddaughter of a survivor. It brings a form of Jewishness to the stage that defies cliché, inviting audiences to reflect on where they come from and what they’ve inherited. What sets NIUSIA apart is the collision between its content and its timing—it’s urgent, deeply human, and quietly radical.
Is there anything specific you’re hoping the audience will take away?
When I started making NIUSIA, I didn’t have answers—only questions. I didn’t grow up with a clear sense of my cultural identity, and for a long time, I felt shame about how little I knew. But in researching the show, I came across a line in the Talmud: “Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it.” That became my permission slip. It reminded me that knowledge, identity, memory—they’re all things we can keep returning to. Keep turning.
On stage, I pull books from hiding, scatter and restack them, dance with them. It’s a physical metaphor for piecing together a fractured history—my grandmother’s, my mother’s, and mine. The journey I go on is one of discovery, confusion, grief, humour, and deep love. My hope is that the audience feels safe to sit in their own not knowing—that they feel there is no shame in starting from questions. The show doesn’t offer neat answers. But it does offer a sense of curiosity, care, and joy. It’s ultimately a laughter-filled love letter to my grandmother, and to matriarchs everywhere. I hope audiences leave feeling moved, open-hearted, and maybe inspired to pick up the phone and call their grandmother. Or their mum. Or their kids.
Your Ideal audience is in attendance, who’s watching? Or more importantly – who isn’t…?
NIUSIA has a pretty wide net in terms of audience base! NIUSIA is for theatre nerds, lovers of dark laughs, and anyone with a complicated family. It’s for Jewish folk—religious, cultural, or just figuring it out—and for 2nd to 4th gen immigrants making sense of where they come from. Kin-keepers, history buffs, mother-daughter duos, and anyone who’s ever asked, “Wait… how did we get here?”—this one’s for you. Who it ISN’T for?! Great question.
If you’re after a feel-good romp with jazz hands and a happy ending tied up in a bow… this might not be your night. NIUSIA goes deep—into family scars, identity crises, and all the weird stuff we inherit without a manual. It’s also probably not for folks who get itchy when things don’t resolve neatly. If you like your stories simple, tidy, and emotionally airtight, NIUSIA might feel like a bit of a rollercoaster: there’s laughter, heartbreak, and a whole lot of “wait, did she really just say that about her Holocaust-surviving grandma?”
Oh, and probably fascists…? Yeah. No nazis please. Thaaaanks!
It’s an intense month, so where you’re able, how do you plan to relax, and are there any other shows you intend to see or want to recommend?
Oh absolutely! I have plenty of brilliant shows to recommend. Kinder, by ary presentation which is a sassy, sexy, and urgent look at the responsibility we as members of the queer community have to the youth, Altar, which is an absolutely breathtaking two-hander about queer love, religion, and the sacrifices we make to choose ourselves, and Shitbag, a sexy fast-paced one-person show about casual sex and chronic illness.
In your ideal world, how can we improve the Fringe, performance, and the industry?
I have a few suggestions. As THE largest open-access theatre festival in the world, Edinburgh Fringe is a remarkable beast; an artistic melting pot replete with opportunities. But it is prohibitively expensive, and frankly, inaccessible to a significant cross-section of the world’s creative industries. The creative industries have a huge access barrier, and so many voices and stories are priced out. We have a class issue, and it’s fallen out of “fashion” to address it…but also, working-class artists can’t afford to put those stories on stage! This needs to be addressed!
NIUSIA runs at Venue 26: Former Womens Locker Room at Summerhall
Photo credit – Mayah Salter
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