- No one has ever asked us - September 20, 2024
- Muriel Akkerman and Eline Sap joined our team - September 5, 2024
- Idir: Algeria - April 25, 2024
Since 2022 we have been publishing interviews with refugees on our website. We wanted to get to know and make available for the wider public their stories: where do the people come from, why did they leave their home country and choose Germany as their destination, how did they come, what would they like to achieve in their new homeland, what kind of problems do they encounter to achieve their goals, how does their daily life look like? By publishing these stories, we hoped to give the refugees a face, and to further some empathy, understanding, and respect. The stories have been read by many, all over the world, although less by German citizens, unfortunately.
The stories were not only read for personal purposes. Several teachers in different countries used the interviews in their classes on political education. Others used them for their own research on migration and integration. Most notably until now is probably the play made by The Performance Art Theatre of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad in Serbia (Pozorište Promena). The play is based on the stories told in the interviews. Especially the impressive account of Hamdiya inspired the actors Nevena Erić, Sanja Banićević, Dunja Mikić, , Relja Štiglić, Vasilije Pačariz, Kuzman Krstović, Sergej Petrović, Stefan Simić.
Tamara Nikolić has been corresponding with me on the play since the beginning of 2024. Below I will cite from this correspondence to give an idea of the experiences of her theatre troupe.
Tamara wrote that the goal of the play was “to bring the journey [of migrants] and everything they encounter and go through until they reach their desired destination to people who know nothing about it… In our country, people have a negative attitude towards refugees or are reserved because they don’t know anything about them. Also, there is a lot of fake news that spreads and creates even more revulsion. We want to change that as much as we can.”
After their play, the theatre troupe normally asks the members of the audience about their thoughts and feelings about the play. After the first performance, Tamara wrote, “people were touched, which was our goal. Some of them told us that they will no longer cross the street when they see refugees but will help them. They told us that their awareness of the world we live in today and what has been going on for years has been expanded. It can happen to anyone and we shouldn’t judge. We are glad that people reacted positively and that we managed to break down some prejudices.”
In the beginning, during the writing of the play, the actors made an extensive study of the backgrounds of the refugees, “researching the countries they come from, their culture, religion, the political situation in Europe towards refugees, etc. During the process, we recreated all the scenes mentioned in the stories, for example, border police, ships, refugee camp, violence… Over time, we realized 
that all of that was distracting from the stories and their point, so we threw it all out. In the end, we sat in a line, dressed in black, and told the stories of those people. There are only two stories left that share common scenes like the ship and running away from the police. We also included some songs that are appropriate, they mostly served us as links between the stories. We also played guitar in some places where it could contribute to the story. The performance lasts two hours and ten minutes. We played three nights in a row. The first and last night were full, and on the second day we had four people. We wanted it to be as intimate as possible so that there is room for 24 people. The audience included 
professors and students from our academy. After the performance, we always talked with them, they would tell us what we needed to work on acting, but the main impression was of course the topic we dealt with, it was very stressful for some people. Refugees are not presented in the media the way we tried to do, more precisely we only told their stories. The truth from their perspective.”
After having played seven times in Novi Sad, the theatre troupe went to Zagreb: “It was wonderful in Zagreb, the biggest hall and the biggest audience we’ve had so far. And the audience reacted well there, we also had a conversation after the show with people who wanted to talk about our process, stories, etc… We will continue to play in our student theater from October. You can check on Instagram, if you want @pozoristepromena ( Theatre Change)… After the last show, a girl contacted us to ask how she could help the refugees and she told us that one of the stories inspired her for an art work.”
