Arts > Theatre

Satellites

The Garage

02/10/22

Billed as a story about loss and hope but, in reality, so very much more, Natalie Songer's one-person performance on Saturday at The Garage in Norwich, affected me in ways that I could never have predicted.

It is not often that the writer and performer greets you as you enter the auditorium, but that is exactly what happened on Saturday night. As we filed in, Natalie was waiting, with a smile, but also inviting us to select a stone from a cardboard archive box. Already organised on stage were several more stacks of boxes, each one labelled – 'Memories / Fictions', 'Sadnesses', 'Bombs / Bouquets', and so on. On a desk was an old radio, whilst behind that was a projection screen, and more boxes.

Natalie explained that she was half Dutch and half English, and that this was a story that was as true as it could possibly be. What happened over the next eighty minutes was an emotional journey so deep and powerful that, at times, made me begin to feel awkward. It was as if I was intruding into a deeply private and personal story. But this is a story that, for Natalie, needed to be shared. For her, as well as for us, it was a story far too important not to tell.

At a family gathering in Holland several years earlier Natalie learned of two brothers, her own great uncles, and how their lives had taken very different paths towards the end of the Second World War. Both had worked for the Dutch Resistance. Cor, the elder, was arrested and was sent to a German concentration camp. Tom, the younger, escaped to America and became a scientist working for NASA, involved with the Pioneer programme, a  series of space probes designed in the late 1960's to explore our Solar System. It culminated in Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, which, after flying past Jupiter, then crossed the orbits of Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, before disappearing into deep sapce, never to return.

As Natalie picked through the archive boxes, retrieving and discarding their contents as she went, two distinct narratives unfolded, and two very different tales were told. Gradually, the stories of Cor and Tom were each laid bare, as was the story of Natalie's quest to keep those truths alive.

Performed badly and 'Satellites' could have descended into an emotionally awkward and embarrassing TED-like lecture. But there was never any danger of that. Instead, we were strapped emotionally into our seats for the full ride, our utter commitment to the story punctuated only by a few strategically positioned moments of levity and light.

'Satellites', for me, became one of the most powerful and moving theatre shows that I have seen in recent years. It is an interlinking and overlapping story of loss and hope, of success and failure, and of time and memory slipping away, rather like the Pioneer 10 probe, as it continues its journey into deep, deep, space. Directed by Nicholas Barton-Wines, and produced by Karen Goddard, this is a definite not-to-be-missed experience.

And, if you want to know what we did with the stones, you will also need to come and see the show.