(applause)
- [Woman] Hi.
(audience cheers)
Hello everyone.
You're all looking beautiful this evening.
So my name is Sadie,
and I know you're all
here to see me today,
but just for a second I want to pretend
that I'm actually sitting in this audience
here with all of you guys.
And up on this stage, we see a young
Palestinian man named
Karim, and he's a refugee.
Now, Karim is being given a guided tour
of a soccer stadium in Munich by this
taller, older, German dude named Niels.
And apparently, to keep
in line with this notion
of wilkommenskultur, or welcome culture,
Germans do things now
like send newly arrived
immigrants on bus tours
throughout the country
to visit popular cultural
and historical sites.
So Karim is walking about this stadium,
and he appears to be
both nervous but excited.
And he's looking at this
lush, green soccer field
with an almost longing.
He interrupts Niels to ask,
"How do we get onto this field?
"I just want to run across the grass."
To which Niels responds, "Nien."
"But why?" asks Karim.
And although Niels tries to explain
the pristine conditions under which
the grass must be kept at all times,
Karim's disappointment only grows further.
Now, the dialogue fades out
and the theater grows silent.
The lights dim as a
spotlight shines upon Karim.
He appears anxious and he begins to pace
back and forth and back and forth
along this fence surrounding the field
as though he were just itching
to feel the green grass beneath his feet.
Okay, now we hear the
sound of a drum beating.
And at first, it's pretty subtle.
It starts slow, but gradually
it grows louder and louder
until it's pounding faster and faster.
And then he jumps over this
fence and onto the field.
This glorious leap is followed by a series
of parkour stunts all across the stage.
Karim appears to be flying,
and just when you think he's satisfied,
he performs a front flip off of the stage,
landing just inches before the front row.
He sprints about the audience,
not once, not twice,
but three times around
performing back flips and somersaults
to each beat of a drum,
leaving nearby audience members
with their hands up and mouths wide.
So I, too, was sitting
in the audience that day,
and before I had really begun to process
what I had witnessed,
I felt goosebumps climbing up my neck
and tears were streaming down my face.
I remember seeing just one word
flash over and over again in my head
to each strike of the drum:
freedom, freedom, freedom.
So this scene that I've
just described to you all
is from a production of "Winterreise"
or "Winter's Journey," put on
by the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.
And the Gorki is really on this mission
to reclaim the role of theater
as both a social and a political
force to be reckoned with.
Now, this particular play consists
of seven professional actors
from Afghanistan, Syria, and Palestine,
as well as our eighth German actor, Niels.
And "Winterreise" is kind of
dealing with these actors'
wide-ranging but real life perceptions
on the land of exile that
has become of Germany.
So now I want to ask you,
how was it that I was able
to connect to Karim's longing
for freedom in this new home?
Well, to answer that, I want to turn first
to the work of a political
theorist, Hannah Arendt.
In "The Human Condition,"
Hannah Arendt reconcieves
of the political as a form of action
which takes place in the
realm of public appearance.
And she defines freedom as
not a personal property,
but a collective creation.
And so Arendt calls for a plurality
of perspectives in politics,
requiring us first to
register other perceptions
on that reality in order to challenge
our preexisting frameworks
of understanding.
Now, Arendt's conception of the political
I believe aims to create a
more holistic understanding
of who we are within a
public and what we need.
And that's something that
needs to be renegotiated
constantly because these
things also change.
I believe that when we stop interrogating
who it is that we the people really are,
then we relinquish our own agency,
and we essentially agree to let those
in power decide that for us.
Now, this brings me to the
work of Richard Delgado,
one of the early founders
of critical race theory.
Now, Delgado made the really
worthwhile contribution
of introducing the power of storytelling
to the realm of legal scholarship.
In "A Plea For Narrative",
Delgado brings to
life the ways in which
the voices of minority
groups in this country,
or those he refers to as outgroups,
have been historically devalued
and abnormalized by the mainstream.
For this reason, it has
always been necessary
for outgroups to rely on storytelling
as a way to build bonds and cohesion
but also common understanding
amongst themselves.
With these stories, however,
Delgado asserts further that outgroups
are also creating a kind
of shared counter reality
to the dominant narrative,
which get perpetuated and
reinforced by the mainstream.
Now, Delgado reminds us that ideology
functions to make the
existing social arrangements
appear both fair and natural,
thereby deeming legitimate
the power dynamics
that are in play so long as this
ingroup story remains unchallenged.
Counternarratives can thus
serve to subvert the status quo
by shattering the illusions put forth
by the dominant ideology and by negating
the stereotypes and the stigmas
being imposed upon their communities.
In this way, I believe that Delgado
is demonstrating to us that storytelling
can actually enable
outgroups to break free
of an unjustified exclusion.
Now, while I certainly find
that Delgado's argument
holds true in the legal context,
I also believe that it can apply
to the realm of everyday life.
In her most recently published
play, "The White Card,"
Claudia Rankine writes
in her introduction,
"Perhaps any discussion
of racism does not begin
"on a position of equal
footing for those involved.
"Perhaps the only way to
explore this known and yet
"invisible dynamic is to get
in a room and act it out.
"Now, theater is by its very nature
"a place for and of encounter."
So let's talk some more about the Gorki
and on the influence of Bertolt Brecht
on the world of German
theater in particular.
Bertolt Brecht was this really radical,
neo-Marxist playwright
from the early 1900's.
And I think his most enduring influence
comes from the style
known as epic theater,
which he both theorized extensively on
but also really brought
to life in his own place.
And his writings on this technique
proposed essentially that
a play should not aim
to have spectators identify emotionally
with the characters or any
of the action on the stage.
Instead, Brecht argues
that a play should serve
to provoke rational
self-reflection from the audience
and a critical view of
that which is taking place.
So why is this important?
Well, Brecht's didactic technique
really set the tone for centuries to come
in both his home of German theater,
but also across the world.
Brecht was determined that epic theater
could have the audience
leaving each production
with an enlightened awareness
of self and of nation.
He thought that plays could
change how people think
and how they related to one
another in their everyday lives.
And this is exactly what the
Gorki Theater is trying to do.
By bringing to the fore
those voices at the margins,
the Gorki is trying and
working to complicate
and to challenge German
preconceptions around identity
and nationhood in order
to allow for something
new to arise in their absence.
The Gorki is creating a counternarrative,
and one that includes the experiences
of migrants themselves.
So keeping all of this in mind,
let's finally come back
to Niels and to Karim.
The scene that I described to you all
at the beginning of this talk,
I believe presents a perfect example
of a Brechtian moment,
the minimalist set design,
the harsh white lights upon the stage,
and the actors' way-too-close-for-comfort
engagement with the audience.
These are elements that
serve not only to trigger
the spectators emotionally
and affectively,
but also to paralyze them in thought.
In a later scene of Winterreise,
Niels approaches Karim
during a private exchange
and he asks him, "Are you
finally free now in Berlin?"
to which he responds, "No because my heart
"is in Palestine and
Palestine is not free."
Through drama, comedy,
and the power of affect,
the Gorki Theater has managed to transform
the theater stage into a
platform for political debate.
It has brought people with
histories and a present
so inextricably linked and ridden
with conflict and prejudice
into the same room just to act it all out.
I believe that theater
models like the Gorki
can serve at the very least to enable us
to have more meaningful and transparent
conversations with one another.
And everyday conversations matter
because formal equality has always been
and will continue to be driven by changes
first within the culture.
Today we face a crisis, globally,
framed around migration and borders
and increasing diversity.
As we bear witness to a resurgence
of white supremacist
attitudes and behaviors
around the world, I believe that creating
safe and public spaces for
marginalized individuals
to be seen and to be
heard and to tell their
own stories is essential.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
