Refugee Performance: Practical Encounters - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841506370 ISBN 13: 9781841506371

Publisher: Intellect Ltd, 2012

Synopsis

Exploring theater works created for, by, and with refugees, this hybrid collection of essays combines newly commissioned scholarly work with examples of writing by refugees themselves. These varied contributions illuminate performances that range from theater in Thai refugee camps to site-specific works staged in a run-down immigrant community in the United Kingdom. An exciting addition to the growing field of applied theater, Refugee Performance provides inspiring insight into the resilience and creativity of artists responding to one of the most critical issues of our time.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Balfour is chair of the Centre for the Arts in Development Communication at Griffith University, Australia.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Refugee Performance

Practical Encounters

By Michael Balfour

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84150-637-1

Contents

Acknowledgements, 
Permissions, 
Illustrations, 
Author Biographies, 
Preface, 
Chapter 1: Iraqi Memories. A Personal and Poetic Exploration of Homecomings, Departures and Arrivals from a Theatre Director Who Fled Iraq in 1987 and Returns Home Again Niz Jabour, 
Chapter 2: On Stitches Michael Balfour and Nina Woodrow, 
Chapter 3: Health Theatre in a Hmong Refugee Camp: Performance, Communication, and Culture Dwight Conquergood, 
Chapter 4: Play Extract: Forged in Fire A performance text created by Okello Kelo Sam, Laura Edmondson, and Robert Ajwang', 
Chapter 5: Narrative Theatre as an Interactive Community Approach to Mobilizing Collective Action in Northern Uganda Yvonne Sliep, Kaethe Weingarten, and Andrew Gilbert, 
Chapter 6: Marketing Trauma and the Theatre of War in Northern Uganda Laura Edmondson, 
Chapter 7: Encounters in the Aida Refugee Camp in Palestine: Travel Notes on Attending Alrowwad Theatre's Production of Handala (2011) Rand T. Hazou, 
Chapter 8: Rape as War Strategy: A Drama from Croatia Sanja Nikcevic, 
Chapter 9: Far Away, So Close: Psychosocial and Theatre Activities with Serbian Refugees Guglielmo Schininà, 
Chapter 10: Play Extract: Refugees Zlatko Topcic (Translated into English by Davor Diklic), 
Chapter 11: 'Politics Begins as Ethics': Levinasian Ethics and Australian Performance Concerning Refugees Tom Burvill, 
Chapter 12: Refugee Performance: Encounters with Alterity Michael Balfour, 
Chapter 13: Repeat Performance: Dancing DiDinga with the Lost Boys of Southern Sudan Felecia Faye McMahon, 
Chapter 14: Theatre as a Healing Space: Ping Chong's Children of War Yuko Kurahashi, 
Chapter 15: Drama and Citizenship Education: Tensions of Creativity, Content and Cash Sarah Woodland and Rob Lachowicz, 
Chapter 16: Inclusive Democracy: A Consideration of Playback Theatre with Refugee and Asylum Seekers in Australia Rea Dennis, 
Chapter 17: Hospitable Stages and Civil Listening: Being an Audience for Participatory Refugee Theatre Alison Jeffers, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Iraqi Memories. A Personal and Poetic Exploration of Homecomings, Departures and Arrivals from a Theatre Director Who Fled Iraq in 1987 and Returns Home Again

Niz Jabour

Prelude

I use the word dreamatic(not dramatic), because dreams in language are my only hope to reach out for the understanding with which to develop creative narratives in time and place. This is a process that can be described thus: 'To take hold of our own existence, our own history, and make it into a dream that was there from the beginning when we were called into this space' (Pelias et al. 2008: 254, emphasis added).

The poet Omar Khayyam asks a question about time travel in our dreams, about the meaning behind (us) being born and why (we) come to live:

If my coming were up to me, I'd never be born
And if my going were of my accord, I'd go with scorn
Isn't it better in this world, so old and worn
Never to be born, neither stay, nor away be torn?

(Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat)

In answer to the Persian poet, I found myself a refugee without any given options, and if I had known that I would become a refugee, I would have wished I had never been born.

Background

I was born in 1962 in a city called Najaf, which is the centre and holy place for Muslims of the Shia faith. It is a small town known as the home of the largest cemetery in Iraq and the shrine of Imam Ali Bin Abi Talib.

My unique position as an artist stems from my upbringing, education and training in arts (specifically in theatre) in Iraq, my subsequent lengthy and involved experiences in exile and my work with local and exiled multi-ethnic communities in Iraq, Pakistan and Australia (since 1998). I was a young child when the Ba'ath regime came to power and was a university student at the inception of Saddam Hussein's leadership in 1979. As an Iraqi artist, I studied theatre and directing for years, only to see any possibilities for a future disappear. I lived through the sacking of libraries and destruction of books, and I have witnessed it all again, with different targets, in more recent years on visits home since 2004.

I lived the multiple complexities of cultural identity during my journey as a refugee, crossing borders between Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Australia.

The power of narrative

We narrate what we see and experience either in our inner reality or in our imagination. The power of narrative is the power of our voices to maintain memory in all forms and patterns. The re-telling of stories becomes a real option for making human voices heard through forms of conversation and performance. Words form stories that can store history. Words have power, and this is why, under tyranny and in dictatorship, specific words are officially banned and others suffer from self-censorship.

We participate in actions and we get involved in the outcome of events, whether we are or have been the oppressed or the oppressor, victim or witness, powerful or powerless. We engage in the processes that generate the re-telling of collective or individual memory.

We reconstruct frameworks of events, memories and imagination corresponding to historical and/or cultural frames in our memories. The reconsideration of history no longer remains a chronicle of the powerful but becomes an account of the voiceless (powerless), silent and dismissed voices of the people.

I like the attention Ricoeur pays to the role of mediation or mediator, where history is the mediator between memory and forgetting. I am, however, more interested in having artists – singers, painters, poets, mimes, actors, writers, directors, film-makers, musicians, dancers, composers, performers – stand as mediators between memory and remembrance. To give them the means to narration based on the experiences, imaginings and interpretations that may bring some light to their truth and sense of justice.

In Memory: an Anthology (Wood and Byatt 2008: 203) the poet Craig Raine wrote: 'Memory is like metaphor in its operation [...] I see almost every narrative, every performance as form of metaphor in which I encounter narrative in the structure of thematic designs through one's self.'

I agree with this, and find here an exposition of the interaction between the self and poetic and everyday languages as a means to further the exchanges between personal and historical narratives.

Personal memory and historical events in an everyday-life narrative

I invite you to visit The Rooms [of my story] with me. 'Room[s] of imagination, room[s] of memory' are metaphors to narrate stories within a poetic narrative in which 'the event itself operates as a lightning rod that allows us to see clearly for a brief moment.'

At home: 13 November 2008 – 8.17 a.m.

I am at home now. I am at home, in a circle of unfinished thoughts and doubts about the future. It is just a huge dust in Iraq all day and every time. Dust awaits and welcomes me, across the border, into the city and at home, like a monstrous salute for an absent return. It is enough to be alive. I have arrived in a country that is like a big prison, where concrete blocks prevent the eye from looking to the other side of the street, where the city is like a detention centre with Iraqis volunteering in the police and armed forces. Passing one checkpoint after another, when the road to home is like a train of endless checkpoints, when the sentence, 'show me your identity certificate,' is a common welcome, and where fear stands like faceless thoughts in the eyes of passengers from the Kuwaiti border to Najaf city in the south of Iraq.

Here I am in a neglected land, in the suburb of Al-Ansar, where cholera is enemy of the poor, nesting in the drinking water like a dream in the desert. I have arrived, but where to now? I meet with my brothers, sisters and the rest of the family one after another, and news of my arrival is like fire eating dry leaves. 'He is back!' my sister shouts, and it is like I never left, or it was a short while ago and not the 21 years of the exiled life of a refugee. Nothing has changed, the same houses, streets and shops with high levels of corruption among police, army and government officials. Huge wires connect all the houses and buildings to electric power generators like spider-houses, hanging on walls, fences and over roofs.

Welcome home, with no drinking water, no electricity. These are the typical thoughts and conversations in every house. People are talking and saying that one of the reasons we do not have electricity and water is the occupation policy. This argument is used against Iraqi political parties. This answer is one of the most common answers you get here, even if you interviewed the entire population, while others believe that the vast driftnets of Iraq's government corruption are beyond description and consider Iraq the most corrupted place on Earth.

The first piece of advice I always receive is, 'Do not talk about God and politics!' but every conversation is about the politics of religion. People still believe that the invasion took place because the United States and its allies had come to liberate them; others think it is because God is not happy with the Iraqi people's faith and beliefs. 'What is God and do I believe in God?' No one is interested in talking about the future because the future is like a black spot of confusion on the white page of the country's history and the life of Iraqi society. What can I do, and how and where do I start?

Let me hope tomorrow is not the same as the days that have marked the passage of centuries here up until the present?

Okra: 13 November 2008 – 10 p.m.

I spend some time with my family with lots of joking and food. The Iraqi lifestyle is, of course, very different from the Australian. The people's dreams here are about security, jobs and the desire to be able to express their opinions without political or social repercussions or even a bullet in the head. In the midst of all kinds of pressures, people are (still) looking towards the future.

Every little detail here is a special moment of peace and harmony in memory, which I have missed before, after and between departures and arrivals.

From Baghdad: 18 November 2008 – 4.26 p.m.

Walking around the streets is like reading a poem written by an unknown poet. People's stories are jumping from one corner to another and they have lots of thoughts to share when they come sit and share my silence with me. People are thirsty to tell me about what happened to them in their everyday life. Here, I do not ask anyone any questions. I just keep listening and they do the talking. Sometimes all it takes to make people talk is to say hello. 'Hello,' and little bit of respect is what people need to express without stopping.

I am listening to everyone's sorrow and pain and trying not to ask any questions, because the connections I have with those stories are alive in my memory.

Timing: 25 November 2008 – 10:37 a.m.

I am trying to sleep but I cannot, because of the social pressure from my family surrounding me now and environmental issues, such as water shortage, dirty or infected water or air dusty with depleted uranium. There are daily confrontations between people and government officials about meeting their daily requirements for water and food. Sometimes these confrontations lead to fearless or desperate acts and end in death, in prison or in a garbage bin. Life here is not a joke or a drama research project. Not even an objective academic study. What I see and witness is related to the dreamatic vision about one's own self-reality, when real and not real are very hard to separate.

The rooms

I need to use the metaphor of a room to retrieve the complexities of war, refugees and exiled worlds. These are memories and experiences I dwell on. They are raw, performative materials, and I am sharing this journey with you.

I acknowledge that I am a learner with located experiences in time. I wake up in the morning thinking in Arabic. I start thinking in Farsi after a few moments, and a little bit later I (re)start, thinking in English. I am living (in) a variety of languages and cultures. I am living (in) many rooms.

The room as a metaphor comes from a mystical structure in the One Thousand and One Nights. The room is a metaphor of and for story-content in real-life experiences. Remembering the One Thousand and One Nights brought back to me this narrative: a person went to meet the king in Baghdad, seeking to find an answer to a question. The king listened to his request and said, 'I will give you a key that opens fifty-one rooms in my palace and if you can't find the answer, we will talk.' The fellow took the key and went from one room to another. There was an empty room, a room with one chair, a room with dead people, a room with princes holding flowers, a room with swords and costumes, etc., and the king said, 'You can name anything to be found in these rooms!' But at the end, in the last room, there was only a mirror that stood as a door without a room.

I do not have to tell the reader what to read or how to enter these rooms at this stage of the journey, because I/We are the stories, and they are told with our own and other voices.

A story is enclosed in a room and I ask you: 'What are you going to do?'

Room 1: Bleedings of imprisonment

I threw the door of mercy away
and kept a mirror in my pocket
for the dictators and those sleeping in the brothel of politics.
I threw the door of the house away
I carried the prayer of ascetic fasting.
The Spirit is a key for a lost lock.

Throw all the land and bleeding imprisonment
on the threshold of exile.

Naked I called those who were not in spirit.
Oh strange! It is naked life!
Leave clothes and outdated land here –
The land and wasteland,
Each question for justice and annihilation –
I have thrown my limbs on the side of the road
And the way that led me to fast.

I've thrown everything
And calm, I hope to depart.

Room 2

There is a beautiful pain, lying in the bottom of
self-burning (burning inside) of all affiliation.
There is a beautiful hope, placing seeds of light in every step of our life.
Pain and hope are the keys to presence.
In the interval between them
I become a citizen.

Room 3

Tell me what you remember and I will tell who you are because I don't know, and none know what we would or could forget and why.

Room 4

Each one of us is allowed to make our own history and history is what we make.

I went to Baghdad four times: the first time was on 24 April 2004 – there was no state and the streets were full of blood and shades of sorrow were painted on people's faces.

I went to find out about my family. How old were they? What do they look like after nineteen years of exile within and without? Is it valid or true to say that the memories of having being born here arose like a burning fire inside me, making me feel like a lost child? I saw the destruction of cities, houses, buildings and human bodies. Breath was screaming alive in the air. I have 19 years of life, looted or shared, that was spent crossing borders to survive. The problem I had was bigger than my memories of my family, and it no longer exists; it is merely an illusionary mirror echoing the silence of the unknown.

When I arrived the first man to recognize me was my father. He was sitting as I left him, in the same spot. I stood and looked at five people sitting in front of our old house and my brothers were sitting there too, but they had never met me before because they were born while I was living in exile. My father shouted like a wounded soul, and his tears told me how long he had been waiting for that moment to see me again.

Where shall I start? The entire street wakes up. This young boy who departed from his home is coming back to his family and friends. Welcome home, welcome to the grave of memories under occupation, welcome now. I have with me a camera, I open the bag and show the children how to use it anywhere and anytime they want it.

Room 5: Private Room

During the day, I frame my dreams
At night, I burn all the frames of me.
It's the coldness marching across all borders.
Like the child waking up to bring some water to the family,
early in the morning.
He didn't know that there was a bomb waiting for him, a nine year-old child.
What the father said: it's night time, the soldier is asleep
. When he wakes up, I will ask him if he really meant to kill my son or not?
Have a nice dream then, in the coldness of a dead child.
My mirror broke a long time ago and my voice is getting old.
But I could sing sometimes for myself and the shadows in my mirrors.
My fingers are not bleeding any more.

Room 6

The second visit to Baghdad was on 23 February 2006 when there was civil war and fighting in the streets of Najaf, and when my memory was bleeding for answers. What could I do?

This was a time when the entire society and culture had collapsed, and when Iraqis were fighting among themselves and killing one another. This was when unknown and re-discovered diseases began to be born in the bodies of families. It is unfinished, and there is nowhere to go.

Room 7

On my third visit, on 24 April 2008, I am in urgent need of finding peace within my soul, of finding what it is all really about? Why the Iraqi memories? Is it because I was born in Iraq? What are the impacts of war and dictatorship regimes on the social fabric? Am I still the researcher who is living the experiences?

Thoughts grow like seeds in the soil of lived experiences and in time they manifest in questions. I started to learn more and more about myself and my relationship with a country called Iraq or HOME. Where can a researcher and an artist stand, witnessing a real and unreal world of war?

Room 8

The conversation sleeps in the bed of silence,
No word in or out
Just the eyes
Looking in a dark room for a candle's light to come.
Alone like a sick bird
Lying on the ground thirsty....

Room 9: Eyes

Two eyes, one on the door and the other one on the road, waiting for absent returns.
Two eyes like road stones,
like twins slapping death,
and swinging swings for a stranger.

Two eyes cried until they became blind,
and white sand walked in them, into white windows,
story and memory,
as if history is repeated twice.
as if they are the laughing wars
Or coffins hanging in the sunset.

Two eyes,
the wooden stick is the sight of a blind man
who reads pictures on the ground
and visions he has seen.

Two eyes
Like yours, Baghdad.
Whenever a blind man fails, the river dries up and the palm tree dies, Baghdad
Stay like us, two rivers and a third river of human beings
We will meet like two eyes....

Less and more, I am Ok.
The moon is a room for rent
and the sun is not my heater, nor have I a bag.
What to take with you to see drying rivers?
War time, war zones, war thorns.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Refugee Performance by Michael Balfour. Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Intellect Ltd
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1841506370
• ISBN 13: 9781841506371
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 316
• Editor: Balfour Michael