Migrations
Immigration:
TO is a very suitable method to work on issues related to immigration: racism, exploitation, rights of refugees, Italian language classes etc.
1) Work with refugees
2) The making of a play about the situation of the African Workers of Rosarno (video -report in English)
3) Workshop with teachers and the making of a play about integration
4) Project in Marseille and the Comores Island on immigration (video and scenes in French)
5) Project with the street children of Accra (Ghana) who emigrated from their villages (report in Italian, scenes in English).
1) Work with refugees
Refugees often don’t know their rights well enough, as they understand the language only a little, they don’t know where to turn to, how to find work, how to negotiate about their wages, how to avoid to be extradited and perhaps be tortured again or again to become a victim of our social and climatic catastrophes, often the result of our policies.With TO we reenact the most common and most difficult situations to analyze them together with others, in order to understand what are the key words a refugee needs to know, to identify what is the fundamental information they need, what are the questions to ask an audience and the solutions to look for. With immigrants we generally work with Image Theatre first to understand, without having to depend on words, the most urgent physical circumstances we have to deal with: how to cope with racist violence, how to get a job, how to get paid after the work is done. Then we work with words. To discover the key words for negotiations, bargaining and about payment with the employer, to defend their own rights, to establish contact with the people in the village, to withstand their own relatives who call them every day asking for money, thinking that a refugee who made it to Europe is loaded with money.The work with TO then allows us to enact all these difficult questions. And subsequently we either make a Forum Theatre play among refugees in which they share information and strategies, or else we take the scenes to various places to which we invite people with expert knowledge on these issues, lawyers, potential volunteers ready to help individuals with their first difficult steps in Italy. Obviously we always, if this is possible, try to involve the government and non-government institutions to draw their attention to the concrete problems refugees encounter, beyond legal regulations and existing services. All in all, we invite civil society.
A very significant experience occurred in a center for underage refugees, where the people spoke little Italian. Many scenes showed the difficulty of being paid after having worked. One after the other came on stage to try out solutions, ‘tricks’, but they also learned the magic words. These right expressions were like a lifesaver for them, they continually repeated them after having played, to never forget them again. Beyond the training aspect, the exchange of precious information, the workshop was also an accelerated language course and a test at the same time. They were teaching each other mutually, according to their needs.
A Forum with a broader audience is also very interesting, either for the refugees because they can see what a local person would do, what ways and words he/she would use to overcome oppression or for the audience who finds itself in the shoes of the refugee and discovers all the difficulties and daily shit they have to take. The audience can propose solutions but they become aware that, if you are in the position of the refugee, it is not so easy to survive as it sometimes seems from the outside.
The audience will also understand that, without the solidarity by all, injustice increases and invades all areas of society. So the performance also looks for a way to help overcoming indifference or to make way for compassion to reach a level of awareness and alacrity that leave no space for racism and exclusion.
2) The making of a play about the situation of the African Workers of Rosarno (video in Italian -report in English)
In the case of the African Workers of Rosarno, all the aforementioned aspects are included. It is a play we performed 12 times and it has contributed to creating an enormous solidarity network around them. It has also served to develop an awareness of the fact that it’s not only the African Workers of Rosarno live under these conditions but that such a network of solidarity should be constructed continuously, also with refugees less ‘media-covered’, because if anyone in this society is subject to extortion, we will all be extorted. If you want to read the report in Italian or if you want other information apart from the video, don’t hesitate to contact us.- Video: www.parteciparte.com/video#2– Documents: www.parteciparte.com/AfricanJuice-report-version-RM.pdf
3) Workshop with teachers and the making of a play about Trans-Culture
With CIES in Rome we did work with teachers and later on with the students of schools of different level, using TO to deal with situations related to the integrations of students of immigrant origin. The first stage with the teachers has given us the opportunity to acquaint them with the method, to enact their daily challenges: difficult students, noisy classes, lack of respect towards teachers by both students and their parents (without mentioning the media which lets them look like a bunch of lazy people with 6 months of holidays every year), very demanding programs, work under pressure, all these meetings, the talks with the parents… Besides problems in class which they were able to enact, aestheticize and analyze together with theatre fun, they were also able to work on the major problems related to the integration of students with an immigrant background: what can you do when an immigrant student doesn’t understand the language, or when the other students don’t understand why there are new immigrant students all the time and start excluding them or become racist? How can you manage the tensions between groups when there is a hidden racist aspect?When a scene revealed many heavy, recent and urgent problems, we would make a Forum. Every teacher could try out a solution. Together they would discover risks, difficulties but also new possibilities, strategies that work. All of the theatrical material that emerged during four workshops of four hours was later reworked and reenacted with social workers who attended the workshops with teachers. During one weekend we worked to create a play.During the open rehearsals the teachers came in great numbers to give their opinion and confirmed that we were spot on regarding the problems of integration in schools. The play was called “Benvenuto Marius (Welcome Marius)” and was performer in 10 schools and afterwards in a community center to make it known to a larger audience, apart from teachers. In the schools the young people were very happy to see their stories on stage and even to be able to intervene in them, to play the teachers themselves, to be the ones to give answers and to present proposals. The could also take the role of the teacher to show them what they would do in their position, in that way discovering also what the problems of the profession are, finding themselves in the role of the teacher but also in the role of the immigrant, in front of the bully or of someone without the will to understand the immigrant. Furthermore this play tried to demonstrate the socioeconomic roots of the problem, showing the Romanian boy’s mother victimized by exploitation and therefore not just someone who takes away jobs like the media always love to insinuate. Underpaid, unable to buy fashion clothes for her son who was now the laughing stock of the class because of his clothing style.
The fact that this was a story that really happened and ended badly made it easier to raise awareness among the audience. The strongest moment happened when an openly fascist boy, in a vocational college where there was a lot of racism, opposed against racism and started making a fool of one of his “fellows” who kept on giving racist statements. Considering the fact that the scenes were totally real, the kids in the audience who intervened on stage to propose solutions and actions of solidarity were already acting in reality. The immigrants present did not fail to grasp this dimension. After every performance two CIES workers analyzed what had come out of the play with the youngsters, in order to further stimulate the process and to help them phrase adequately what had happened.
4) Project in Marseille and the Comores Island on immigration (video and scenes in French)
This project on immigration was carried out in with the Comoran community, both in Marseille as on the Comores Island. The goal was to reenact the life of the immigrants, the problems they face in Frane and their relations with their country of origin.These immigrants, called “je viens” (“I’m coming”) have to bring loads of gifts and money when they return to their country and often they have to put themselves in debt and live in total austerity to be able to return to their country and be respected and estimated. On the other hand, many of them take advantage of the situation and ‘buy’ themselves respect in the country of origin, so they give many marriage vows, present themselves as very rich and very important, whereas in France they often live in very precarious situations, either in terms of social level or in terms of health.In the first stage we worked in Marseille for a month. One week in the Panier quarter with guys of Comorian and Maghreban origin, to get a better understanding of their situation and to enact it. What came out was the enormous gap between the culture of origin and the culture in which they moved around themselves, the impossibility to be recognized as French citizens, while in their countries of origin no-one considered them fellow citizens anymore, the pressure of their parents who want to keep the illusion alive that they are still part of their nation and force them to live according to their more traditional culture of origin.
In the second week we worked with adults with a North African background in the north of the city. Again we saw this dizzy-making gap between the culture of origin and the new culture in which they felt never to be really taken into consideration. The parents reenacted situations that afflicted them: the fear that the ‘modern’ behavior of their children will be heavily commented in their countries, the immense effort they have to make to maintain a link between their children and the country and culture of origin. If the children have been born in France, they often don’t want to listen to their parents talk about their home country.
From this perspective we created a play about the difficulties of the immigrants and their children in France. The play was later performed on the the Comores Islands and caused great amazement, because it showed the immigrant not how they tell about him at home but how he really lives in France, between racism, exclusion, exploitation and hanging on to a mystified culture of origin.
In the third week in Marseille, back in the Panier quarter, we organized an advanced training in which we created a scene about typically French issues: the exclusion of the elderly in the retirement homes. The immigrants were very happy to be able to work on problems that don’t connect the immigrant with problems of legality, integration etc., because the scene about the elderly included roles and lines which could also apply to the situation of immigrants, but nevertheless based on a French-to-French problem. The immigrants of the port were proud to come and propose solutions to problems of the French, because normally it’s the other way around. This play, performed on the streets of the port twice, received a great acclaim.
You can find the French transcription here:
www.parteciparte.com/fra/category/scenes
On the Comores Islands, apart from the training work we did to strengthen the local ‘Les gri-gri‘, two plays were created about the relationship with those who emigrated, the “je viens”. One play showed the ‘je viens’ who are exploited at home, under pressure all the time, the other showed a ‘je viens’ who, instead, decides to cheat on everyone, to promise anything and more but doesn’t give anything to anyone and when he goes back, he leaves enormous debts and so many pregnant women who won’t ever get a husband.
In the video you will find segments of the scenes and also some scenes about corruption:
5) Project with the street children of Accra (Ghana) who emigrated from their villages (report in Italian, scenes in English).
This project served to train educators who work with street children in Accra/Ghana. We created two plays about their difficult work, later with a group of five selected educators we worked with the street children and young people on probation to create another two plays about their lives and the road that led them to life on the streets. You can find a detailed report about this project (in Italian) here:www.parteciparte.com/Relazione_Ghana.pdfThey play of the street kids was later presented in Italy. You can find a description of the performances of this project at the end of the report and two other descriptions (in English) on this page:
www.parteciparte.com/eng/category/scenes (‘Street is London’, o ‘Bad boy club Accra’).