0. “We are faced with the great task of an intercultural alphabetization. And in the process, we are all learning a new language.”

1. Points to consider

The acknowledgement of a “presence of the elsewhere”, i.e. of a coeval Other, immediately brings us face to face with an absolutely fundamental question: how to speak and write in order to make explicit from which perspective, given which background (my) speaking and writing occur? Is it at all necessary to disclose “perspective”? Does this not automatically foreordain a certain “tendency”? How can generalizations and affronts be avoided? If I acknowledge that my counterpart has come here from an “elsewhere”, then our encounter, as a process of convergence, is a mutual challenge. Acknowledging the “elsewhere” pledges one to hesitation, to caution; it pledges one to the avowal that, from the perspective of the respective “elsewhere”, each pronouncement can and may, indeed maybe must, appear questionable.

2. Mission

The one performance at the Theaterformen festival that most impressed me – full and immediate disclosure – was Mission, presented by Bruno Vanden Broecke. Not only was I favored with a magnificent acting performance. Not only – from my perspective – is this text by David van Reybrouck (translated by Rosemarie Still and also played in German specially for the Braunschweig performance) an admirably complex piece of literature. What takes place in these more than one and a half hours has by now become so rare in theatre that it deserves special mention: it is an actor’s simple address to and facing of the audience, the ability to transfer spectators into a rare state of concentration, to take them along into a space of thought and images that mutually question one another. Vanden Broecke, alias “A Missionary”, tells of a life between Africa and Europe, between poor and rich, between God and men, between town and country, between the highly technologized Western world and the necessity to make one’s best with and from what is available.

In this mental to and fro, his speech very gradually creates in spectators themselves an interspace – possible only in theatre? –, a site that makes it possible to perceive and discern that this figure onstage can only speak this way because his encounter with various worlds and realities has made him relinquish all (apparent) certitudes. Yet it would be mistaken and careless to file the evening away under the heading “tales from a missionary’s life”. The very quality of this work (the text, the acting, the successful final coup de théâtre) is in fact to uncouple the notion of “mission” from the activity of a missionary and ask earnestly, i.e. without a trace of embarrassment, to what purpose we find ourselves here on this planet, with what mission – in the sense of a task – we have made the place homely – or by now sometimes unearthly – for ourselves. When, at the end, Vanden Broecke looks upwards and asks (I quote from memory) “What can I still ask of you? Give me your tears. At least give me a sigh. God!”, his subsequent long and haunting scream for “God!” is more expression of despair than invocation and certainty that this imploration could ever be heard. When, at the end, the stage opens up to the back and the gaze falls into a space that can only be described as desolate and (god)forsaken, what is communicated is an avowal of human failure, a lack of any “mission” that would care equally about the wellbeing of man and nature.

3. Reverberation of the scream

Some weeks later at the Hau 1 in Berlin, on the “Ars moriendi” stage. The actors present on stage are preparing for their “last walk”, more concretely they are all repairing to their awaiting coffins. Before one of the actresses closes the lid of her coffin for good, she briefly makes a reappearance and says (I quote from memory): “Maybe the death of God is a mistake. It has not yet been proven.”

I wonder: is theatre making serious talk about “God” possible again? In the humanities, at any rate, a renewed turn to theological issues seems to be taking place: Berlin’s Center for Research in Literature (Zentrum für Literaturforschung) points to the most recent publication on the religious implications in the work of Walter Benjamin, which considers and recognizes in their relevance for contemporary reflection some of the author’s notions and concepts that had long been only reluctantly accepted – such as creation, law, guilt and life.

4. Yet more importantly

However, what currently seems to me more important for the debate on theatre in postcolonial spaces is the abovementioned creation of an interspace. What Vanden Broecke/the “Missionary” practices/provokes, is an enduring irritation of certitudes; he allows the spectator to dwell in dubiety. One could also say: with his narration of episodes and interspersed questions, he holds everything in such suspension that at the end, all that is left is an inescapable and uncomfortable question, which is: what am I here for? What am I doing here? What are we humans doing here on this planet? Each separately and all of us together?

Whither do we go with this question once the performance has come to an end? How do we leave the interspace and where to? Where can possibilities of an answer be found? Or, in a first step, could it be more meaningful to let ourselves be led by the irritation and grant it further space? Thus, at least for a while, to be without certitudes and in flux? Should we rather stall, stutter, come to a halt, stand still? Have we become interspaces ourselves?

With a view both to the current basic principles of performing arts and the state of the world, André Lepecki writes in the foreword to Planes of Composition, edited jointly with Jenn Joy: “[O]ur current condition, where a hyper-mobilization of the planet is under way, primarily fuelled by well-tested colonialist and capitalist policies and dynamics, demands the creation of a political phenomenology of heterogeneities – a theory that acknowledges the reality of the irregular, the proliferation of dynamic eccentricities, and thus challenges the very notion of centre upon which colonial and postcolonial melancholic and neo-liberal kineticism gain their organizational and hegemonic force.” Lepecki explicitly references the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk who, in volume 3 of Spheres, attempts to unfold the state of the world starting from the notion of “foam”. Sloterdijk writes: “Almost nothing and yet not nothing. A something, if only a web of hollow spaces and subtle walls. A real actuality, yet a contact-shy formation, which at the slightest touch cedes and bursts. This is foam as it manifests itself in everyday experience. Through the whipping in of air, something liquid, something solid, loses its density; what appeared self-contained, homogenous, stable, morphs into loosened structures. … How should a first definition of foam thus read? Air in unexpected places? … In foam, buoyancy forces come to bear that trouble upholders of established conditions.”  According to this, theatre – and more particularly this performance of “Mission” – could be characterized as an exemplary site of the generation of foam, understood in the positive sense.

5. Another kind of interspace

The missionary’s questioning and reflecting is linked with “home leave”. He leaves his mission post, goes to his family and at the same time enters confinement. His arrival “home” is – at least to begin with – marked by abstinence from any news from the outside world. Rather, his gaze turns inwards, to his own inner space. “Home leave” as defined by the missionary thus proves a useful notion in the attempt to differentiate interspaces. It denotes a respite – the missionary takes time to reflect, to take a breath – and at the same time the remoteness from all places believed to be safe – it creates distance in all directions. What thus occurs is, in coming home, the removal from a place called “Heimat”. In this case, “home leave” thus goes hand in hand with the feeling of “homelessness”, of non-belonging. Rather, what happens in the “homeland” and within family gradually becomes foreign and questionable itself. And: coming home – so we learn – is not necessarily tied to a place.

Maybe what we carry away from the theatre can best be called a positively valenced foam formation. It is a fragile awareness of something that is yet to find shape. Retaining this image, the performance also grants us a type of foam-wrapped “home leave”. We could transport the interspace out of the theatre and extend it into our daily life – provided we ourselves have become more porous.

If we give credence to Mark Terkessidis’ considerations on the topic of “interculture”, then our survival in a feverishly evolving world requires a new awareness which, referencing architect Aldo van Eyck, he calls “in-between-awareness”. As spectators touched, moved and frothed up by theatre, we could play our part in shaping this new awareness, at least for a while.

6. Reverting to “Mission”, pausing at language

The festival’s program leaflet stressed that Bruno Vanden Broecke would present the play in German specially for its guest performance in Braunschweig. With an unmistakably foreign accent, he did indeed proceed to weave his way into and through his hosts’ language with great virtuosity. The very fact that the actor was not expressing himself in his native tongue contributed to the particular attention his speech was granted. Halting and brittle, it gave the well-known a new sound. In addition, his special effort garnered him further admiration. Yet what about the dancers, performers and speakers who had traveled from South Africa? Were they equally invited to take part in shaping the interspace? As far as I remember, no headsets had been provided with which to simultaneously listen to the theatrical address in a second language. The festival thus presented itself with an ambivalent gesture: on the one hand it successfully invited guests from South Africa to take part in the event, on the other hand these very guests were excluded from following the perspective of a “colonizer” – as which the missionary is also to be seen. Yet if theatre aims to contribute to cutting across discursive boundaries, it must become multilingual, and issues of translation and translatability are part of its (new?) tasks. Otherwise, it only practices a further form of exclusion.

7. Repeatedly demanded sensitization for one’s own speech

Lecture by Grada Kilomba (Copyright Andreas Etter)

Authors such as Grada Kilomba – in her talk on Sunday 6 June 2010 in Braunschweig and in her most recent book Plantation Memories – or also Mark Terkessidis in the previously mentioned Suhrkamp publication Interkultur again and again point to the fact that seemingly simple questions such as “Where are you from?” can carry racist connotations.

That the question “Where are you from?” could be formulated in an offensive manner may at first seem strange. Why should I not be allowed to ask where you come from? What should the conversation between us start with, when we meet for the first time? The question of a traveler to the person he meets on the way – is it not all too natural? First we ask where from, then where to, in order to gain first indications as to who the other is. Could we settle with asking only “where to”? Would it suffice to know that a common stretch lies ahead? Do we need to know where we are going in order to communicate? What does the very notion of a route imply? Can we imagine an encounter that would not immediately question the other? That would not interrogate him, but acknowledge him without question?

8. All this for what?

In the best of senses, in order to not take one’s own position on the world’s large stage too seriously or too importantly. But also: in order to think about what purpose on earth theatre could serve, what we need it for. Do we really need it? At the end of The Thrill of It All – Forced Entertainment’s most recent work – one could think that the show must go on precisely because there is no alternative. The thought of really not playing tomorrow, of lying down in the street in refusal, as put by one of the young actresses in Night Witch  – would that thought really be entertained in earnest by a company such as Forced Entertainment? Are we, are the players prisoners in our own system?

9. Almost reassurance

Perusing the programs of current theatre festivals, one could almost feel reassured as to the state of the world: Theaterformen in Braunschweig, Theater der Welt in the Ruhr-Region – a brightly colored mix, a true orgy of interweavings, which leads us to think: all is well.

One of the first newsletters sent out by Theater der Welt stated: “The Theater der Welt artists come from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and Oceania. They live in mega-cities, come from emerging nations, natural paradises and crisis regions. They work alone or in a collective as directors, choreographers, performers, dancers or musicians. Some are well-known greats, others are performing for the first time in Europe. Even if they are very different, they all have one thing in common, they share with us the time we live in.”

The history of the Aztecs is at last being addressed in Mexico, Nijinsky has finally reached Thailand, township dramas equal Chekhov’s and Ibsen’s swan songs to the family in tragic content (a questionable notion), former Moroccan nightclub singers show us that there are also combative women in Arabic countries – nothing is lost.

One could come to the conclusion that we are a world community of “artists of life”, that we are all playing theatre and that it is what unites us. The baroque topos of the world as stage has only one catch: we lack the belief in a God who settles everything in our best interests. The gods/directors who stage and take responsibility for the overall spectacle are highly earthbound. This is due not least to the fact that we have the necessary financial means (and thus also the power) to afford this way of thinking. Could shared time really be the lowest common denominator we can agree on? No, we are not all equally equal at the same time. Even dwelling in interspaces, viewed from other perspectives, seems no more than a self-indulgent game. Unless from it arises the insight into new exigencies.

The stage installed in the big top in front of the Staatstheater Braunschweig is dimly lit. We can just see a black man running in slow motion without actually moving forward. His face is covered in jet black paint. He excessively swings his arms forwards and backwards, moves his head from left to right and stares at the audience. His heavily painted red mouth opens to a broad grin that shows shiny white teeth. Around his chest he wears an explosive vest which is shown openly during the whole performance. His movements change into a bodybuilding-persiflage, change into the skipping movement of a boxer, change into a fast run and finally into a flight – yet he is not leaving his spot on the stage. Later on, the performer is going to wear a conventional ballet-tutu, he is going to conceal his eyes behind big dark sunglasses and a metallic crown of thorns is going to cover his head. Then he will climb through the audience and over the rows of seats, he will press his body against the spectators because there will be very little space and he will run his hand over some heads in the audience.

Still from Christmas Beach Walk – Jörg Laue, 2008.

I am a member of this audience and I know that this performance is highly reflective and well thought out. Mercilessly it uncovers stereotypes and prejudices that still exist and somehow influence the behavior of many people. I am not easily scared when I’m in a theatre context and I believe myself capable of dealing with my somewhat prejudiced subconscious.

But I can’t help it, they’ve got me. Completely against any reason my heart starts beating faster. The black menace, the suicide bomber, the religious zealot, the eyes, which I can’t see, which are threatening me because I don’t know what’s going on behind that black mask, the insecurity. What if the performer has planned this moment for months and months, what if, here and now, he’ll blow himself and us into pieces? What if this highly theatrical event changes into utter seriousness in order to score off those reflective theatregoers, those politically correct intellectuals? To blow oneself up, here and now and thereby setting an example? It seems that despite my efforts to keep my thoughts unimpaired and unbiased my subconscious prejudices enforced by a lively imagination have taken over…

What I had to deal with that evening was a really clever and intelligent performance. With Influx Controls I wanna be wanna be the South African dancer Boyzie Cekwana played with great virtuosity on my subconscious fears. I had to confront the fact that, despite my efforts, I was to a certain extent susceptible to well-known prejudices concerning outward appearances or unfamiliar behavior displayed by people of different cultures. For some minutes, a highly artificial and artistic event suddenly became a full-grown horror-trip. This experience not only told me something about the performer’s situation but also a lot about myself.

This aesthetic experience also represents the informative and at the same time always disconcerting quality of every aspect of the weekend’s main focus The Presence of Elsewhere – Here and Now at the festival Theaterformen in Braunschweig. Not only the presentations of videos and performances but also the lectures incited every participant to question their point of view and to get to know different perspectives which maybe also led to a questioning of one’s self-concept as I described it at the beginning. Unfortunately, or I’d better say fortunately, there were too many things to see, to hear and to experience.

The series of lectures started with the political scientist Kien Nghi Ha from Berlin who gave a very informative survey about the collective defense mechanism Germany has developed concerning the country’s colonial past. By analyzing speeches of contemporary politicians (e.g. Horst Köhler, Peter Struck) he confirmed his alarming thesis about “the silent return of colonial discourses in Germany”. Philosopher and theologian Fabien Eboussi Boulaga from Cameroun was announced with a lecture about “Intercultural and Political Dialogue” between Africa and Europe. He began his lecture by calling this title “daring” and went on by explaining that the subject of intercontinental dialogue regarding the difficult process of the decolonization of Africa was too complex to be treated in half an hour. Grada Kilomba from Berlin filled in on short notice for Nasser Al-Sheik. She read a chapter of her book Plantation Memories – Episodes of Everyday Racism. This brief lecture inspired a discussion about the situation of black people living in Germany. Their everyday life is a struggle against their fellow white citizens’ assumptions that black people couldn’t possibly be genuine Germans. Instead they’re frequently asked when they will be leaving again for their native country. Hereunto Kilomba quoted a passage from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks: „If people like me, it’s in spite of my color. If they don’t like me, it’s not because of my color.” This statement brilliantly points out the German dilemma of apparent tolerance and acceptance coexisting with denial and repression.

Born in Kenya, grown up in Australia, currently living in Amsterdam: In her performance Hybrid Eyes Esther Mugambi was dealing with her native country that she never really got to know. She projected photos of six Kenyan women onto her body and lend them her voice. Then she played with different associations evoked by her outward appearance, her Afro-hairstyle, her black skin. She crept over the zebra-crossing-like stage, roaring ironically like a lion, then we saw her on the screen completely naked with white stripes painted on her body and running first through dark streets then over a steppe and at last hiding in the thicket of a forest. At one moment in her performance, she sang some lines from her song There’s No Such Thing as Kenyan When You Have Left and Gone and it became clear that despite of her efforts to understand the Kenyan life and despite the fact of being born in Kenya, she’d never get the whole picture of it from her now alienated point of view.

Faustin Linyekula. © Andreas Etter.

Ever since I saw the performance of Congolese dancer Faustin Linyekula, Le Cargo, one sentence is stuck in my mind: „I dance for you to send money to my family.” This simple phrase points out one of the problems that underlie any peculiar preoccupation with artists from former colonized countries. This problem has also been frequently mentioned in regards to Postcolonial Theory. There is always a danger of using a subject as important as the discussion of the colonial past as an opportunity to build a new label in the art market as well as in the academic context. For some years this new label would serve as an academic and artistic hype and then would go back to normal, i.e. insignificance. Whereas not only the artists are dealing with existential needs and requests but everyone concerned by the contemporary problems this so-called past is still creating. Every single lecture, performance and video-installation presented during the weekend made clear that a dialogue without prejudices between cultures of former colonized and colonizing countries was vital but yet in its infancy.

I think that Silke Bake, the curator of this thematic weekend, did a brilliant job by bringing together so many different people to speak, dance and show their work. I’m convinced that this experience had a pertinent effect not only on my way of thinking. The fact that several days afterwards we were still discussing some of the performances makes me wish for more of those productively disturbing weekends.