Ester's Book

Ester's Book

When, in 2003, my mother Ester was moved to a residential care home at the age of 85 already suffering from senile dementia, I decided to complete the performance which for some time had existed as an idea and a draft - a story of her life.

In a comfortable but unfamiliar room in a residential care home, mother and daughter sit and talk. With a stubbornness bordering on the tragicomic, the same words and terms are constantly repeated. The dialogue reawakens past experiences, unrealised dreams and plans for the future, which only exists in a world of fantasy.

Physical activity is minimal but a diary from the end of the Second World War, a photo album and private film clips from half a century ago reveal different layers of Ester's life. Music and songs from a distant youth accompany pictures and texts, bringing closer historical changes which shook and marked her generation.

The story of my mother is also a reflection on becoming old in present day Denmark, about loneliness and separation.

Nobody is born old. It has been my wish to give voice to some of the fragments of my mother's life which would otherwise have been buried with her.

I am Ester's Book.

Iben Nagel Rasmussen
Holstebro, 2005