Binge Fringe Magazine

INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with… Beth Paterson on Intergenerational Trauma, Laughter and Patti LuPone

Weaving together interview, memories and family stories, Beth Paterson attempts to understand the legacy her grandmother Niusia left behind as a Holocaust survivor and one of Joseph Mengele’s nurses. With more questions than answers, she explores what it means to be an immigrant looking back at her roots.

You can catch NIUSIA at the Main Theatre @ Goodwood Theatre and Studios and at the Studio Theatre @ Goodwood Theatre and Studios at various times between February 25th and March 9th (check the website for more information). Tickets are available via the Adelaide Fringe Online Box Office.


Moss: Hi Beth! NIUSIA explores the legacy your grandmother, a holocaust survivor, left behind – tell us a little bit more about your relationship with her and what audiences can expect from the show?

Beth: My grandmother was 72 when I was born, and she had a very difficult life. So it meant that by the time I became a little more capable of understanding the world around me, she was already very old. And life had not been particularly kind to her. So she died when I was about 13 or 14. Which is, of course, the age you are when you think you know it all.

And so I looked at this decrepit old woman who was not at all nice to me. Well, she was nice to me, but she was very cruel to my mother. And I just went, who is this woman? Why should I care? 

It wasn’t until I got to university and started meeting new people, and every now and then the conversation would stray towards family. And I’d say, “Oh, you know, my Nana, she was a Holocaust survivor and she was one of Joseph Mengele’s nurses.”

And on a series of occasions, people were like, “What the fuck? Are you serious?”

And I was shocked because the way in which the stories had been treated in my family line was totally disconnected from the way they were received in the outside world. And so ultimately it was through the reactions of other people that I started to learn the significance of my grandmother’s stories.

And that’s sort of where I began the show. Trying to understand all these different versions of my Nana that seemed totally separate from one another to be like, “who the hell was this woman?” And so the show is about my Nana, but it’s a lot about me and my journey to understanding. 

Audiences can expect to laugh loudly as I sort of try to navigate this space, particularly someone who is Jewish but didn’t go to a Jewish school. I never learnt any of the sacred songs. I didn’t have a bat mitzvah.

So part of the show is me stumbling upon my own Jewishness, so to speak, and be like, oh, this is kind of important, isn’t it?

It’s also a meditation on intergenerational trauma and the effects of silence. It’s a celebration of life at the end of the day and a celebration of family and legacy and women.


Moss: What made you realise it was the right time to write this piece?

Beth: I began writing this in 2019, so it’s been a while in the works. And I remember listening to an album of Patti LuPone songs.

And on one of them, there was a spoof song of “Je ne regrette rien”. And this Patti LuPone version was entitled “I Regret Everything”. And it’s this great big romp of I regret everything, every moment of my life. It was just the joy this songstress took in being miserable. I remember hearing that and showing it to my mum and we both wept with laughter and then we wept earnestly because we heard that and went, this is exactly like Nana.

It came at a time of my life where I was really, really struggling with my identity and my self-image as a post-university artist tends to do. It was a time when I really, really needed compassion for myself. And so there was this figure in my life that I became incredibly fascinated by. And the beginning of the writing of the show is about showing my grandmother compassion. 

Another part of it as well was I saw a beautiful show at the art center called “Merciless gods”. And it was an adaptation of the Australian Greek playwright Christos Tsiolkas’ book of short stories. It was all about intergenerational relationships in immigrant families, particularly Greek and Turkish and the complexities of that and it was in English and Turkish and Greek and it looked at queerness and language and expectations placed upon first gen Australians. Or that one and a half gen where they were born overseas and came to Australia as infants like my mother was. I remember watching this show and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I had quite a difficult experience with it because I went, I don’t look like any of the people on stage. Like, I’m a white lady, right? But the tense relationships between the parents and the grandparents and then the different worlds in which the grandchildren and grandparents lived resonated deep within me. It was that. 

It was going to Europe and visiting Nuremberg and the document center there and realizing the museum was built into one of Hitler’s old rally grounds and having a panic attack and being really shocked at the impact it had on me. So it was really an accumulation of events that drew my focus to understanding who I was, who I thought I was, and who I thought my grandma might be.


Moss: Was there anything in that journey of exploring your identity that surprised you?

Beth: Oh, absolutely, yes. 100%. At the beginning, I just started penning stories and talking to my mum and it sort of started pouring out of me. Not in the way that it exists on stage, as I hope you will see it, but it just started absolutely pouring out of me.

But I had no idea how much it would change me. I think one of the most surprising aspects of it for me was starting to have a relationship with the fact that I’m Jewish and how the basis for that relationship really emerged out of not having a relationship.

That was a really, really fascinating journey. And there’s a moment in the show where I talk about engaging with a cultural consultant because one of the strengths of the show is it’s interesting because I don’t know diddly squat about being Jewish, right? But one of the pitfalls about me doing the show is I don’t know diddly squat about being Jewish. So we started working with a Jewish cultural consultant to make sure that what we were doing was sound and safe while still pushing boundaries. And in our first conversation, she was like, “Tell me how you related to Niusia.” 

And I go, “She’s my grandma on my mom’s side.” 

She’s like, “Oh, so you’re really Jewish then!”

So then there began an investigation of really what that could mean for me. And that has been a great source of joy and anguish and has really continues to sort of shape some of the choices in my life. Now I’m interested in participating and joining different Jewish groups and studies because this show has really pushed me to look at the incredibly rich and long cultural history from which I emerge. It provides me with an unbelievable amount of strength. Like thinking about the number of people that have been before me that I can trace my line back to and think about what they’ve endured, the wisdom that those lines have. I don’t exist in isolation.


Moss: Was there anything that sort of clicked into place? Looking back at her legacy and seeing a reflection of yourself?

Beth: A hundred percent. Right in those early stages of writing and when I was still listening to Patti LuPone and giggling and crying and giggling and crying my mother started offering me books that she’d read when she was roughly the same age as me or other books that she read through her life. I started reading ravenously everything I could about World War II and the Holocaust, but more broadly books by Jewish authors and thinkers and storytellers.

There was one particular book. The first book that I started reading was by an incredible author named Lily Brett – this great book called Things Could Be Worse. It shuttles between different voices in the book of different characters who live in this little community. There was one scene where the family all goes out to dinner at a Hungarian restaurant and the absolute debacle that occurs at this dinner because grandparents don’t want Hungarian food. They want Polish food. But the chef knows a bit of Polish food, so he makes something off the menu, but then they complain about it. And I could just – the lilt and the language that was implicit in those pages, I just remember holding this and going, holy shit, other people have lived this too.

Because I went to an Anglican school. Nobody had grandparents like mine. So, yeah, there have been so many moments where I have dipped into this material and gone “Oh my goodness. This makes so much sense to me.” 

I’ve always been an incredibly avid reader. My mum reads a thousand books a year. It’s unbelievable. But it was through books that I started interacting with this legacy. 

The storytelling aspect and the way of debating and pulling ideas apart has something that feels incredibly natural to me. I think that’s also because my mum grew up in that tradition and so that has been passed on to me. So when I return to those traditions, it feels right. 

The way the set is built is that once everything is on stage, nothing comes and goes. So there’s one moment at the end of the show where there are two candlesticks that are opposite sides of the room, but right towards the end they’re brought together to symbolize the Shabbat candles, the candles we light on a Friday night that I probably lit maybe four times in my life. That idea that everything, everything that is here has always been here.


Moss: What was the research process like for NIUSIA?

Beth: Lots and lots and lots and lots of books. The set, as you will see, is most of my library. And books get picked up and moved around constantly and built and pushed over. So everyone can have a bit of a perv on my reading tastes, which is fun. But it also means it makes it very fussy when we’re touring because I’m like, we can’t just have any books. They represent me. But that’s the point.

I feel incredibly lucky because my mother has been so unbelievably generous and open. I would turn to her repeatedly and ask, what’s your memory of this? What’s your memory of that? And push really came to shove, we sat down and I interviewed her and I had a list of questions, which she looked over ahead of time and was like, “Now let’s do this.” A lot of that interview appears in the show. 

So you really have the three women on stage. It has me as me, me as my grandma in post-war Melbourne, sort of animating some of the stories that we remember and, And then my mum, who I call up to and we converse.

Another accidental part of research as well was the self-referential understanding where I am with this work, because I wrote the show over about four and a half years. So that autoethnographic tilt has been a very strong part of the research and the process as well, keeping diaries and having a very regular dialogue with my co-collaborator, the absolutely brilliant Kat Yates. And a key part of the fact that she’s not Jewish at all. So there was this beautiful relationship where she would be like, “You’re talking about this thing, but I don’t know what that is.”  

And me going, “Okay, I guess that’s a Jewish thing or that’s an Eastern European thing or that’s a first-gen refugee thing.” 

That process of realising, oh, my experience is different in the eyes of my director, created this space where it was all about sharing and educating which appears in the show as well. I really invite people in, and I explain things in a gentle and humorous way, but at no point the audience is going, “What is she talking about? What does that mean?” 

Also talking to other people about the show that I’m making and hearing people go, “Oh, my goodness, that’s just like my grandmother!” and learning that this is such a universal experience of going, “I don’t speak the same language as my grandparents. Where are their stories going? What are their stories?”


Moss: How do you think Niusia would feel if she could sit in the audience?

Beth: Probably appalled and proud. A big tenet of this show is that we resist the silence that was so pervasive in my mother’s family home. In so far as you didn’t talk about these things. And boy, oh boy, do I talk about these things.


Moss: Going against that silence, which sounds like an instinct of self-preservation.

Beth: Well and truly. A piece of text that we’re working on for this new season now I think sums it up. My mum is an identical twin. And at Christmas a couple of years ago, yes, Christmas, my cousin was asking about the show because it had a big impact on him. He loved it. After he saw the show, he called me and we talked for about two hours. It’s the longest conversation I’ve ever had with my cousin, ever. We both laughed and we cried and we shared stories and it was one of those things where we didn’t want to hang up the phone because it was like, “oh, we’re here now. Holy moly, like we’ve, I want to keep talking to you about this forever.”

And so at Christmas that year, he was asking me, “What are the next plans for the show?” My aunt is doing some dishes and she’s scrubbing a dish with a little more vigor than perhaps necessary. And my aunt says, “I think your grandmother would roll in her grave.” 

But my mother, who jumps in immediately and goes, “oh, Goldie, don’t be like that. I think she would have loved it.”

So what my grandmother would have thought is a good question. We will never know. And I also probably wouldn’t have written this show if she was around because I wouldn’t have so many questions.


Moss: What is something you hope audiences will take away from NIUSIA?

Beth: Lots of different things. I think we’ve had a couple of seasons of the show so far, and one of the most powerful and beautiful aspects of the show for me is coming to the foyer afterwards and breaking bread with people who’ve seen the show.

Most times people wait around for me after and then they share stories of their own grandparents or their children or their daughters. Mother’s going, “Oh, I am the kinkeeper of these stories and my mum is on the way out and my kids don’t know their stories yet,” or “My children don’t know my stories,” or kids going, “I don’t know my mum, I don’t know my nana’s stories.” 

It’s said not with a sense of guilt or shame, but a sense of “Maybe I need to do something about this.”

Because in the show I have that experience as well, but I don’t shame myself for it. I go out and try to learn, you know. So hopefully a sense of wonder and curiosity about who came before them and who will come after them. 

Also another look at what it means to be an Australian and all the different faces that can take. Because at the end of the day, my grandmother was well and truly an Australian and so is my mum and so am I, even though what that meant to all of us was incredibly different. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor for Pete’s sake.

And so you can be super white and also still be like, “Hey, I come from a place. Isn’t that an amazing thing?”

I want people to leave the show full of joy and questions about their place in the world.


Moss: You’ve said that audiences can expect to laugh a lot during this show, but it’s a heavy topic. Niusia was a holocaust survivor, it’s hard to imagine the humour there. How important is keeping that sense of humour for you?

I’ll give you a story that does appear in the show. My mum tells this remarkable story when she was in Sherbrooke as a child with her sister and mother and father. And they’re in the accommodation, in the main area and my grandmother Nuisia lets out this booming laugh. She had a very, very recognizable laugh. 

It echoes through the halls of the accommodation. And a woman stumbles in. Her eyes look around and she finds Nana and she approaches her. This woman recognized Nuisia from their time together in Auschwitz from the sound of her laugh. 

You’ve got to laugh. Anything you can laugh at and talk about, you can survive.

And so, I describe a lot of humour in the show as Jewish gallows humour like the old joke goes, “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat!”

So learning to laugh at the unlaughable. Because laughing at the horrors is what a lot of Jewish, like specifically Jewish Ashkenazi humour is based on.


Moss: What are you looking forward to most at the Adelaide Fringe?

Beth: I’m unbelievably excited. Holy moly. I went to the Adelaide Fringe for the first time last year with some of my nearest and dearest, the absolutely incredible Bits Akimbo had a show called “Get in the Boot”.

Incredible work. And me and my best friend and director, Kat Yates, beautiful Kat Yates, went along to help with bumping in, bumping out, flyering, tech, all the rest of it. We went and we scooted around everywhere and I saw like 45 shows by the end of it because I didn’t have my own show to worry about. It was amazing.

I’ve got lots of friends bringing shows over there. It’s going to be spectacular. I’m excited to meet people and talk to people. I’m excited to see people’s shows and look at the art they’ve made and to talk to them in the foyer and have people talk to me in the foyer afterwards. Yesterday, I spent all day calling historical societies in Adelaide to see if they wanted to come to the show because my show’s about history. Ah!

I hope I get to talk to some old people. That’s been one of the coolest things about my show is having people of all generations come up and converse and being able to connect a bit over that. Oh, my goodness. What a joy. I’m excited to learn and to talk and to have a boogie.


Moss: If your show was a drink what kind of drink would it be?

Beth: A hot toddy made with brandy. Because it’s like a cup of tea. You wrap yourself around it. It’s warm. It’s spiced. It’s associated with looking after people.

And brandy packs a punch. It’s thought of as an old woman’s drink. But you can’t mess around with brandy. Brandy was also my grandmother’s favorite alcohol and brandy Alexander is the only cocktail my mom will ever have.

And I like tea, so that brings them all together.


You can catch NIUSIA at the Main Theatre @ Goodwood Theatre and Studios and at the Studio Theatre @ Goodwood Theatre and Studios at various times between February 25th and March 9th (check the website for more information). Tickets are available via the Adelaide Fringe Online Box Office.

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Moss Meunier

Our Adelaide Fringe Editor. Moss is a bit of a globetrotter and struggles to stay in one country for long. They first fell in love with fringe theatre in Prague in 2014 and first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2018 as an improv comedian. They’re interested in a broad range of genres but are particularly excited by themes of neurodiversity and immigration. Their favourite drink is a foamy pint of Pilsner Urquell - it was their first beer and tastes of teenage freedom.

Festivals: Adelaide Fringe (2025), EdFringe (2023-24), Prague Fringe (2024)
Pronouns: They/Them
Contact: moss@bingefringe.com