The assignment here was to find a story that could work in the Distillery buildings, either an historical one or contemporary, in the environment of stone, brick, oak, iron, fish smells, ceilings of 14 feet, huge windows of observation of the water, the city.

I decided to have a narrator, Grandpa, tell the story of a lifesaving moment, one from the past (the fire) and one from the present (aid work overseas). The “She” in the title is the idealized memory of a woman, Sarah, who saved Grandpa in a fire. The “Me” is the present day granddaughter Janna who is leaving to do aid work, and must say goodbye to her grandfather. In the leaving, she discovers that Sarah rescued Grandpa and their son, but died in the fire. Grandpa’s new partner, whom Janna knew as Grandma, was not her grandma at all; Sarah was. Janna realizes that she, like Sarah, “was going to save the world;” hence the title, “she is me.”

We had two voices to work with for this piece, but we needed the third, that of Sarah, so Lembit suggested using a musical line performed by solo cello (thanks to Karen Ouzounian). This created an otherworldly link for both voices to their past, and a promise for the future.

- Katherine Koller