With Darling as our backdrop, in Every Way Up Has Its Way Down, we trace the footsteps of our Jewish ancestors as we journey from Cape Town, to London, to New York and back. Simultaneously mapping the paths of historical immigrants in these places, our cultural experiences, and pathways through them, and how today we find ourselves both inside and outside of inherited and learned social conventions. We ask: ‘Do we know where we are going, if we don’t know where we have been?’

The piece interrogates our relationship with unknown pasts whilst considering our current etchings on the global landscape. Sharing a Jewish background, we have each grown up and experienced this heritage in very different ways, in locations on opposite sides of the globe. Now, as aliens in some of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, we are uncovering the past in order to place ourselves in the present. Every Way Up charts our attempts to find home in a place and context where we feel like outsiders.

Every Way Up began life in 2013 as a commission from Richmix in London; the challenge to tell a ‘Story of London’ in a theatre space slap-bang in the middle of the East End – toehold Jewish Quarter of London – led us on a journey to uncover our own diverse roots as Jews, Immigrants, global nomads whilst unravelling on of the many stories that form the history of London. It has since taken on a life of its own, constantly evolving and being performed in spaces as diverse a The Roundhouse in Camden, JW3 Community Centre’s kosher kitchen, a private home, and the kitchen of a church as part of the Brighton Fringe in 2015. The piece is interactive, and perfect for performance in a kitchen, home or non-theatre space. For Voorkamer, it would take on a new life, weaving in stories of Jewishness in Darling and the surrounding area, both making it incredibly relevant to the setting whilst maintaining the universal messages of history, home and finding belonging at the foreground.