Performance As Testimony

Relying on Deep Listening and Survivor Agency

When people think of Holocaust testimony, they often picture a survivor sitting in front of an interviewer, giving a structured, linear account of their experiences. Dr. Greenspan challenges this model, noting that early in his work, survivors did not see their stories as something to be documented in a single session. Instead, his practice involved meeting survivors multiple times over months or even years, allowing them to tell and retell their memories in ways that felt right to them. This iterative process allowed for deeper reflection, trust, and agency.

By returning to the same survivors, personally transcribing and listening to past recordings, and engaging in dialogue rather than extraction, Greenspan resisted the conventional “testimonial” approach. Survivors were not just recounting—they were conversing, reflecting, and evolving their own narratives. As one survivor told him, “One thought sparks another, and then another that I may not have even known I had.” This process, he argued, is what makes collaborating with survivors to understand their historical accounts truly gratifying and meaningful: it is not a static recording but an ongoing relationship of learning together with survivors and audiences.

Performance as a Mode of Witnessing

Although he never intended to write a play, Greenspan’s years of survivor conversations eventually led to Remnants, a performance piece based on recording survivor voices. Initially, he was asked by students to write something dramatic for a Holocaust conference, but he resisted, unsure of how theatre could do justice to what he had heard. However, as he revisited survivor dialogues, monologues began to emerge, shaped by the rhythms, silences, and cadences of the survivors themselves.

In Remnants, Greenspan does not portray survivors as distant figures of history but as real people navigating memory, loss, and resilience. One monologue, Burying the Cemetery, encapsulates this ethos. A survivor describes being forced to dig up and burn bodies in a concentration camp, grinding remains into dust so thoroughly that no trace was left behind. “After a few weeks, grass started coming up. It looked just like any other meadow. There was no sign that anything unusual had ever happened there,” the speaker recalls. The performance, in this moment, acts as a counterpoint to the erasure—it reveals the cemetery, thus constructing another account of the genocide.

Performance allows for a kind of witnessing that is distinct from written or recorded testimony. As Greenspan noted, theatre is as much about showing as telling. Survivors themselves often performed their stories—using gestures, pauses, even reenactments. One survivor, Victor, physically walked Greenspan through a forest-like setting of chairs in the room, demonstrating how he hid from the Nazis. Through this performative technique, Greenspan recalled “He really wanted me to understand… he showed me.” Performance, then, is not about embellishment but about channelling the embodied, deeply human experience of memory.

The Power of Unresolved Stories

In many Holocaust narratives, there is a tendency to seek resolution—a moral lesson, a clear takeaway, an inspiring message of resilience. Greenspan resists this urge, arguing that Holocaust stories should remain unresolved because history itself resists easy closure. “Whenever I am introduced as a survivor…” one survivor reflected in Remnants, “…I'm a little bit uncomfortable. I mean, what do people want? What do they expect?... In the beginning, people were silent. Today, they are stupid. But I'll tell you. I'm stupid, too.”

One of the most striking monologues in Remnants, “The Vanity,” exemplifies this approach. A survivor recalls a scene in Auschwitz-Birkenau where a Scheißkapo (Shit Commander) had arranged a makeshift vanity in the corner of the latrine. Using salvaged wood and a small mirror, she created a space to apply makeup—a moment of fragile dignity amid horror. “Now you tell me…” the survivor asks, “...does it inspire your hope, or your revulsion?” The power of this moment lies in its irresolution. It does not offer a lesson. It offers a question.

Greenspan’s approach highlights the value of ambiguity. Rather than fitting survivor testimony into neat narratives, he invites the audience to engage, debate, and learn together. He reflected, “One of the results is that people want to talk about it. Maybe to find some higher synthesis, maybe just to bat it around. Maybe because it’s conducive to learning together.”

For Greenspan, the heart of Holocaust testimony is not documentation—it is conversation. His work as a historian, teacher, and playwright is bound together by a commitment to deep listening and learning in dialogue with survivors, resisting the capital-S “Survivor” label which often leads to simplification and forced inspiration. Instead, Greenspan’s approach honours the living, breathing, ever-unfolding act of remembering through schmoozing.

For researchers, Greenspan’s approach offers a methodology that is deeply ethical, dialogical, and survivor-centred. These qualities are reflected in his methodological principles of building long-term relationships, iterative listening and narrative co-construction, and respecting survivor agency. By emphasizing ongoing conversations over static testimonies, using performance to enhance witnessing, and leaving stories open-ended, he resists simplification and forced closure. His approach honours the living, breathing, ever-unfolding act of remembering—one shaped not just by telling, but by listening, showing, and learning together.