Debut playwright Geoffrey Williams explores the life of Holocaust survivor and writer Primo Levi in his new play ‘Drowned or Saved?’

The South-African born playwright told the JC that his interest in Levi’s writing and way of thinking stems from his background in psychology. “Something about the way Levi writes captured me, his view of the Holocaust and his desperate need to make sense of it,” said Mr Williams.

The play, set after the Holocaust, sees Levi grappling with writing the story of his life. The play imagines Levi conjuring the prophet of Elijah to help him in his quest.

With the prophet’s assistance, Levi is taken on a journey through his own memories which causes him to ponder what it means to have survived the Holocaust.

Mr Williams said: “The point is we all take things from our past, we put some memories away, we face or don’t face them. I wanted to deal with the aftermath of surviving Auschwitz. We said, after Nuremberg, ‘never again’, but we can continue to repeat the atrocities.

“We are losing survivors - so I think it’s important for each new generation to make sense of the Holocaust in their own way, to keep the narrative alive and do our best not to repeat it.”

‘Drowned or Saved?’ will run from 6-24 November at The Tristan Bates Theatre