Writing a Memoir has Value
Writing a memoir may be a way to gather a perspective on the events that have shaped one’s life. Compiling the stories in a book or producing a memoir on the stage is a way to share it with an audience and invite them to be entertained, informed, or touched emotionally at some level.
Critics may call it vanity.
Photographer, poet, and fashion editor for Genlux magazine, Amada Eliasch wrote her play As I Like It over a weekend and has staged it in London and Los Angeles.
I met her toward the end of her performance dates in Los Angeles at the Macha Theater in West Hollywood. Amanda was quite animated. She greeted me cheerily and happily took me backstage to meet the cast–her son Charlie, actress Elizabeth Karr, and performing artist Lisa Zane. Keep up-to-date with future productions and learn about the cast at As I Like It.AmandaEliasch.net.
Finish What You Start
The theme I took away from my conversation with Amanda is that producing the play itself–and working with friends in the process–was the goal she set out to achieve.
“Everyone’s life is interesting,” she said.
Amanda was born in Lebanon to an opera singer, Mrs Caroline Brown née Gilliat, and her father Anthony Cave Brown who was a journalist and historian. She was married until recent years to Johan Eliasch, whose corporation includes sporting goods brand Head.
Amanda was easy to talk to, and she was eager to share about her experience of staging the production. “I don’t think my life is anymore interesting than the next person’s.”
I asked her what advice she had for someone writing their memoirs.
“Just write it down,” she said, smiling. “Just do it. Forget about right or wrong. If you have family members you may have to protect them, but let’s face it — we really can’t shock anyone anymore, can we? I mean, nothing is as shocking as the suffering of children in Africa.”
Even though we sat during the interview, Amanda remained energized. “I write about my mother. She cares more that I finish a project. She’s keen on that and she had brilliance. She had brilliant talent and she was appreciative of other people doing things and finishing them.
“Take the risk. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. That’s my philosophy.”
As I Like It
Amanda, with a gentle smile, cautioned me that I might find the play a bit odd. I told her not to worry. I believe stories should move forward in sequence and while As I Like It was an anecdotal collection, it did move along a forward path.
Elizabeth Karr played Amanda and she opened, coming out of a large white skull on one side of the stage where she also exited after finishing the anecdotes. Honestly, the shape seemed more like a large ivory face. And her black dress was bulbous at the hem. Amanda said as a child she wore black fairy dresses and said in the play her character is dressed as a funeral gnome. But neither the costuming nor the props overpowered the story.
Elizabeth engaged the audience and the anecdotes wove well in and out of each other — despite the fact that one was about a gardener tying up Amanda in a shed when she was seven and kissing her. He lost his job.
The music was fabulous and the opera lineage certainly extends from Amanda’s mother to her son Charlie.
What As I Like It Meant to Me
Perhaps the reason I enjoyed As I Like It, was because my own mother was a storyteller, reveling in the antics of people she met in western Pennsylvania and in her own travels around the U.S. and Europe. Plus, Amanda didn’t set out to impress anyone. And there was truth.
“I’m a bit wild,” she confessed to me before the performance. “I don’t want to live lies … I want to live my own truth and I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to hurt someone else because I’m lying. I want to be free to try the things I want to try.”
That theme resonates with us all. Amanda has the courage to take risks.