Frania and Stefan

Frania and Stefan

Frania and Stefan was commissioned by the Hearth Centre for the Tales of Lockdown blog as part of their Arts Council funded project Living in Times of National Emergency, and is the moving and inspiring story of Terenia Dickenson’s parents, told by their daughter Terenia Dickenson. Frania and Stefan met in the UK after the war and settled in Birmingham after both having experienced almost unimaginable horrors in World War 2 in Poland and Russia. 

In this monologue, written by Ali Belbin and performed by Terenia herself, and filmed/edited by the Hearth Centre in lockdown conditions on Zoom, we learn about Terenia’s parents’ wartime experiences, but we also learn about the effect of trauma on the way they conducted their subsequent lives- by being consistently loving and generous to ,not only their children, but everyone else who crossed their paths.