October 1943: Heinrich Himmler gathers all the Reich Nazi party leaders in the Polish city of Poznan to inform them of the regime's decision to completely exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. Before doing so, however, the commander has two phonographs set up in front of everyone to record the speech on two discs. However, contrary to popular belief, it is not Himmler's words that are recorded, but the silence of the room. With Magda Toffler - the second work in which he himself takes the stage (the first already a guest at FIT in 2019) - Boris Nikitin delves deep into the most hidden layers of 20th-century Europe. Again, the staging is reduced to a few elements: a chair, a manuscript and the artist himself.
Nikitin's works are known for their boundary between fictional theater and performance, between documentary and propaganda; in this performance he delves into the past of his grandmother, Magda Toffler, whose Jewish origins and a life spent in hiding are only discovered after her death. A biographical text, then, that sinks into forgotten memories, evoking the silence of centuries and interweaving personal and collective history, reflection and emotion.