INTERVIEW: Noga Flaishon <> Memoriam (Southwark Playhouse Borough)
Get ready for a new play coming this month to Southwark Playhouse Borough! Written by Noga Flaishon and starring Beverley Klein, Memoriam tells the story of Jewish families through a science-fiction drama. We sat down with the writer to chat about the show.
Could you tell us a bit more about who you are and what the show is all about?
Sure! I’m Noga, I’m a writer and a producer based in London. I migrated to the UK from Israel in 2014 to train in acting and then life led me in another direction. Nowadays I am mostly a writer. I write for stage, audio, and interactive media.
Memoriam, my newest play, is a science fiction drama about Jewish families, the commodification of trauma, and the holocaust entertainment industry. It explores a near future where memories can be extracted, bought, and sold, and tech giant Memoria leads the field. When Rachel, a savvy buyer for the company, is tasked with purchasing the memories of her grandmother – the last holocaust survivor, the ramifications for her family prove larger than she could have anticipated.
How did you get started on writing the piece, where did the idea come from?
I started writing it during the pandemic. That isn’t to say I’ve been writing it for 6 years; there have been stops and starts, and I wrote several other pieces in the meantime, but the initial idea came to me then. The play was born from the frustration of hearing about Falsettos (the production of Falssettos, which was staged with new Jewish creative) and from watching antivaxxers comparing themselves to jews in the Holocaust... it led me to think, ‘wow, they LOVE our stories... they don’t really need us for them, though '. The writing began there, and the questions the play raised became more complex with every draft.
The show tackles heavy themes such as the legacy of trauma. How did you find the balance to keep it light but also represent the topic?
Who said humour has to be light? True, Honour offers levity or lightness to otherwise ‘heavy’ material, but the humour never makes light of the topic. It points at absurdities and hypocrisies, and it does it with truthfulness and wit. When writing the dialogue, I thought of my own family, and the humour came very easily from there. Laughter is an excellent way to deal with trauma – and making fun of ourselves, our misery and hardships is a cornerstone of our culture. I could never imagine telling a story that touches on the holocaust without it. It would have been an unbearable watch.
How did you come up with blending a high-tech sci-fi world with such an emotional, grounded family relationship?
Sci-fi has always been one of my favourite genres to work in. I’ve always been a huge sci-fi fan. I read the Silver Age stuff as a teenager and never fully left the genre. In playwriting, it’s useful sci fi is a genre that you turn up the dial on an existing question or dilemma, push it to an extreme, outside the limits of current reality and look at it properly. Stories of Jewish trauma and death have been resold and repackaged for entertainment for millennia (as Dara Horn explores in her book People Love Dead Jews), but what happens when those stories literally change ownership, what happens when the product is not just an award-bait film but an immersive experience that lets you play at being a holocaust survivor? What is okay to do? What is lost in the process? Where is the line?
What has the journey of bringing Memoriam to the stage been like after its critical acclaim and previous readings?
Journey is a good word for it. It’s been in the works for a while. Daniel, the director, has been attached to the play since 2023. We’ve had a couple of R&Ds, both independent ones we arranged ourselves, and others provided by awards the play has been nominated for. In 2025, the play was selected for the first Open Submissions Festival at the Royal Court Theatre, a reading also directed by Daniel, and that same year it ran for 5 weeks at the Main Street Theatre in Houston. All of this has led to what it is now, and I can’t tell you how excited I am about the version we're putting on here at the Southwark.
What do you hope audiences will take away after seeing the show?
I always struggle with this question because I never know how my show will land for each audience member. ... I don’t think the play offers any easy answers, so there is definitely loads of room for conversation after. I’d like the show to promote a discussion. I’d like people to examine their own voyeurism, the content they consume... I’d love it if people get into long conversations about it at the bar afterwards
If you have to describe the show in only three words, what would they be?
Tragicomic Jewish Sci-Fi?
Is that 3 words?
Memoriam comes to Southwark Playhouse Borough from 22nd October to 21st November 2026. For tickets and more information visit: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/memoriam/
