We talked with Beth Paterson about the background to her show NIUSIA.
Remembrance, I’ve come to realise, is an act of creation
Beth, you had a sell-out development season at La Mama Theatre, Melbourne and award-winning seasons at Melbourne Fringe (2023) and Adelaide Fringe (2025) with NIUSIA which has its international debut at the Edinburgh Fringe 2025. What inspired this story?
It was hearing a recording of Patti Lupone belting out a Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien parody that drove me to put pen to paper. This spoof, I Regret Everything, captured me. The laundry list of faux pas, the cherished woe, the drama of it all: everything about it screamed Nana. My mother and I laughed until we cried, then we cried until we laughed. Questions bubbled out of me and I pressed for more.
Nana hasn’t left my head since. I became obsessed with this enigmatic figure from my childhood. I had no idea how the bitter, heavy-lidded woman from my childhood memories could be the same charming, verbose, quick-witted woman who came alive through my mother’s stories. And on top of that, how this woman could also be the gutsy survivor who saved countless lives in Auschwitz. This apparent incongruity captured me, and I began writing and writing and writing to uncover who she was, and in extension, who I was.
You ask, "What does remembrance look like when all I remember is the space where questions should go?” How did you go about filling in the spaces and doing the research, and what feelings about remembrance do you have now?
My grandmother was very tight-lipped about her time during the war. It was a seething wound — of hurt, loss, and shame. There were a few sanctioned stories she’d trot out if absolutely necessary, but try to dig deeper and all hell would break loose. She had an acid tongue, and my mother was no stranger to her cruel, pointed outbursts. The message was clear: ask at your peril.
That silence left huge gaps—gaps in knowledge and memory—and vastly different accounts of events depending on who you asked. So while I did a huge amount of reading about the experiences of Holocaust survivors and their children, Kat and I made a clear decision: it was far more honest, and more interesting, to investigate the 'not knowing' than to try and fill the gaps with guesses.
What followed was a deep dive into my own relationship, and my mother’s relationship, with the history and legacy my nana left behind. Because remembrance is a strange thing. It’s rarely about the person being remembered. Remembrance is for the living. We construct narratives to shape who we think someone was—so we can understand who we are, and where we’re going.
In making NIUSIA, I revisited all my unpleasant memories of my nana, and in doing so, I re-made them. They shift as my relationship with them shifts. And making a show about them radically changes that relationship. Remembrance, I’ve come to realise, is an act of creation. Everything in NIUSIA is true—but shaping a story out of something as entropic and contradictory as a human being always creates something new.
We often look upon Holocaust survivors as though they are only that, but they were real individuals and Niusia I understand was by no means perfect? Does this create conflicts in remembering her?
Yes and no. Remembering someone who was complicated (read: sometimes a raving bitch, sometimes the picture of generosity) means learning to sit with ambiguity. One of the guiding principles of the process Kat and I engaged in has been 'and, not or'. We found that Niusia could be incredibly cruel and incredibly loyal. Both are true.
Holocaust survivors have long been cast solely as victims. That’s undeniably part of the truth—but it’s not the whole story. They were also parents, bosses, gift-givers, friends, activists, brilliant pains in the ass. They had the courage to rebuild their lives in the painful shadow of war. And, shockingly, people are rarely, if ever, faultless agents in this wacky world. Being a survivor doesn’t exonerate Niusia from her harsher behaviours—but writing her off flattens her, demands a perfection unattainable by anyone, and robs us of something vital: complexity, compassion, and the ability to hold conflicting truths side by side.
You wrote the piece but you've mentioned Kat Yates. What discussions did you have about how it should be staged and delivered?
Kat Yates has been part of NIUSIA from day one. While her title is 'director' more crucially, she’s the co-creator of the work. So our conversations have always gone far deeper than blocking or staging. An example that sums up her influence: when I first began writing, I didn’t think my Jewishness was central to the story. But Kat—who comes from a Lutheran background—kept asking questions. I’d bring her vignettes and she’d say, “Can you explain this to me?” I’d blink and realise, “Oh… this isn’t universal?” That repeated experience of contrast—of noticing how Jewish my upbringing actually was, despite feeling so estranged from it—gradually became one of the show’s major threads.
Without Kat’s presence, that theme may never have emerged. She became a kind of foil to my writing—a collaborator who could spot what needed to be explained for an audience, what needed expanding, and what could become a central idea. She took on the role of audience advocate, helping us build a show that doesn’t gatekeep knowledge of Jewish history or culture, but instead warmly invites people in. Her questions cracked open something fundamental in the work.
Among many things, NIUSIA is an exploration of diaspora experience—what it means to be the granddaughter of a survivor, to feel not Jewish 'enough', to somehow know so much and so little about your heritage at the same time. Kat’s direction has brought this show to life with humour and humility, but it’s her long-standing collaboration that’s shaped it into what it is today.
What would you like audiences to take away from the show?
More than anything, I’d love audiences to leave curious and unashamed. The starting point of NIUSIA is not knowing, and time and time again we learn from audiences all the shapes and sizes 'not knowing' comes in. We’ve been lucky enough to present this work to secondary school drama students, to young lefty Fringe audiences and to the grey-haired matinee audiences of country towns. Across all of them, something resonates. Youngsters reflect upon the histories from which they emerge, curious to call their grandparents to learn more. Older folk reflect on the long-passed matriarchs of their childhoods, and resolve to sit their families down and share stories they have become the custodians of. And people of all ages breathe a sigh of relief when they hear someone articulate what it’s like not to feel Greek enough, or Italian enough, or Jewish or Indigenous 'enough' to claim it proudly.
With a healthy dose of Jewish humour, NIUSIA gives voice to those feelings. It invites audiences to begin their own journey, no matter how much or how little they think they know. A start is a start.
