YOU ARE OUT
Interactive and participatory performance for a mixed group of immigrants and citizens.
16/11/14 @ Oranienplatz (refugee’s information tent), Kreuzberg, Berlin
This new project follows in time and research from the project Refugees Welcome.
The project continues to focus on the problem of refugees and immigrants being accepted and welcomed into new countries, as well as on the problem of obtaining papers, work and rights to stay in one country. It is also a project that reflects in general on the sense of exclusion and of being expelled by a community.
The idea of the performance is to play a game that is symbolically a mirror of what happens in reality: there is not always enough space for everybody. Playing the game, an old game that many of us might have played when children, allows people to experience, in their bodies, the possibility of being refused, the fight against others for finding a place, and the feelings connected with that. Performing this piece is a way of experiencing a deep consciousness of those topics and dynamics. It is a work about the fight for staying and settling in one country, and the effort and chance necessary for that success.
The performance is conceived to include as participants both immigrants and citizens, to represent the multiracial society of our times and the problem of integration refugees face when entering a new country.
In this game, there is one less chair than the number of participants. When music plays people are asked to dance and walk. When the music stops, everyone has to find a chair to sit in. Everybody except one person will find a chair, thus by excluding them from the community and the game.
The game continues, and each round one new person will be expelled, until at the end there will be only one person left, alone in the community. The performance ends with a new starting of the game with all participants and enough chairs for everybody: this last time when the music stops everyone will find a place, a chair of his/her own, and nobody will be expelled. In this case everyone will feel comfortable, having a place to stay and not having to fight against others to obtain the right to stay in the community.
The idea of this work comes from the sense of frustration we feel when we see people fighting to have papers to stay in a country, who are not free to find a job honestly and are excluded from a community. The same sense of frustration comes every time we feel expelled from a group, be it friends, family, a job, or a country.
