“I am always thinking in theatre how to be useful, how not to make it about me,” says playwright Alexander Zeldin, with a slight frown. “I think theatre has a unique quality which is that it’s at once very private and incredibly public. You are experiencing something in your own mind and heart when you are watching other people.”
Zeldin’s new play, The Confessions, which opened in Vienna and arrives at the National Theatre as part of a European tour this week, extends that tension between internal and external, between a personal reflection and collective history. About the life of a woman called Alice, the play spans the period from 1943 to 2021, from birth until death, and is based on conversations with his mother. “It feels transgressive to me because it’s talking about private things in a very public way,” he says. “I hope people feel there’s something that resonates with them because the idea when you write something so personal is that it becomes personal for the person watching and becomes about their life. That’s my hope.”
