WE KEEP EVERYTHING

Brown’s Mart Theatre’s next theatre offering presents a story of family, memory, and legacy, as a much-loved local performer and personality deep dives into her family’s history.

WORDS TIERNEY WHITE

ONE-WOMAN SHOW, We Keep Everything, created and performed by Lisa Pellegrino, looks back on her family’s history and their migration story to Australia. 

Pellegrino’s family made the journey to Australia from Italy and Scotland in the 1940s and 1950s. They were armed only with suitcases containing their belongings and their memories, and hopes for the future. Over the years, they’ve documented their lives through vast amounts of film, photos, objects, and recorded songs, to both celebrate their lives and grieve memories of a home left behind.

Pellegrino aptly combines storytelling, projections, old recordings, and music to capture the experience of so many migrant families across the country. It’s been a cathartic, heart-warming, and heart-aching experience – a worthy one to keep a precious record of her family’s history. 

“This is a story that has been in me for a long, long time. When my Nonna passed, and as people were passing, I always wanted to hold onto them, which is something my family do – we want to hold onto the past, the people, and the places we left behind. For me, this was a way of acknowledging, I think, that universal experience a lot of people have about wanting to honour and hang onto the past,” she says. 

“Also, I’m very passionate about stories of home and longing, and migration as well, and so many people have those experiences of longing for their homeland, or having to leave things behind, or grieving the past, and trying to move all that forward. For me, it’s a personal story, but it’s also a story about other people.” 

Pellegrino’s family have no shortage of content, having documented their life experience over the years through recordings, recipes, and music. Pellegrino’s also been able to access sweet little recordings she made as a curious child on a Dictaphone. 

“When I was 10-years-old, I begged my dad to buy me a Dictaphone so I could write my autobiography. When I realised I didn't have too much to write about yet because I was only 10 [laughs], I decided to constantly interview and record my family starting with my grandparents,” she says. 

These snippets of the past have been invaluable to the creation process of the show, which is delivered in true Pellegrino style with warmth and humour, with some still moments, too. Above all, Pellegrino hopes audiences walk away with a sense of curiosity about their own family histories. 

“I hope audiences feel warm, and connected, and part of something bigger. And I also hope it inspires or encourages them to start asking questions around the people that they love – whether their biological family, or their community, or their chosen family. Just this inquisitiveness of the past, but also how to hold that and move forward."

We Keep Everything
WHEN TUE 30 SEP – SAT 11 OCT (EXC. SUN & MON), 7PM | SAT 4 OCT, 11AM 
AT BROWN’S MART THEATRE 
COST $24-$41 
INFO brownsmart.com.au

_{Image: Charlie Bliss}