Our Footsteps

A Theatre Performance

Migrants’ narratives as artistic affirmation of our human dignity
and a call for political awareness

Saturday 18 May, 20:30
Theater Perdu
Kloveniersburgwal 86 Amsterdam

A project by AstaroTheatro, IIRE and Stichting Vrolijkheid

More than 20 migrants/refugees artists or performers in 10 languages. The result of 5 months of playful improvisational rehearsals, where through self-representation, migrants share stories of their journey and living in the Netherlands facing a long lasting uncertainty after having crossed many, colonial, borders.

We believe arts need to engage society; they need to represent today’s turmoil.
To this end we come together as migrants, political refugees and locals in order to create a performance: an act of theatre, poetry, music, performance art, choreography. And an act of activism, of human and political togetherness. Projects such as this one are seldom seen in the Netherlands. Hence our artistic intervention. It’s time to stop seeing the migrant as ‘problematic’ or ‘troublesome.’ It’s time to go beyond the politics of social segregation as mass distraction.
Our performance seeks to transcend the political pitfalls of discrimination and hate peculiar to our present and confused world. We want our performance to be a safe haven, a place where diversity is richness and discrimination can only vanish.

Be welcome!

Performers:
Arif Murat Gür, Ayhan Karaağaç, Ayşenur Akın, Elif İleriye Girgin, Erhan Çalıhan, Ersin Adıgül, Farzin Bapiri, Fatima Hajyahya,  Hüseyin Aykan, Iris Maria Tsagri, İsmail Atalamış, Karin Schuitema, Levent Girgin, Maral Jefroudi, Mhmod Pozan, Roberto Bacchilega, Savalan Ghodsi, Sayat Tekir, Sedat Kartal, Souloke Sen, Ufuk Çalımlı, Vasiliki Koutrouli, Yusuf Adam Suali, Zeki Barlin 

Directed by Roberto Bacchilega in collaboration with the performers
Theatre Training: Vasiliki Koutrouli
Dramaturgy: Arif Murat Gür
Stage Movement: Ayhan Karaağaç
Sound Design: Levent Girgin
Project Facilitator: Maral Jefroudi
Production Assistant and Videoproduction: Chihiro Geuzenbroek
Promotion and Stage Photography: Unai Risueño
Graphics: Savalan Ghodsi

With the support of Academie voor Theater en Dans
Many Thanks to: Tenedle (video and photography), Victor Sams (rhythm and sound training), Ersin Adıgül (Photography) and an endless number of friends, comrades and supporters who have been inspiring us during the journey to our theatre performance

Tickets € 10
Tickets Low Income € 5
Please make your reservation: info@ondaitaliana.org
Your name will be on the guest list
Payment: cash at the theatre’s foyer or on AstaroTheatro account. More details when you send us your reservation

Reading Evening at AstaroTheatro: Work/Consume
Saturday 20 April, 20:30

“It was another beautiful day in the small capitalist country. Meanwhile the radio was playing a well-known tune. The rhythm was joyful, the chorus was catchy, it stuck in your head. It went like: ‘Work and consume…’.
‘Work and consume…’, said the TV.
‘Work and consume…’, was written on the newspapers.
Work, consume and… die. ” (A. Celestini)

Is work today serving any other purpose that is not the accumulation of goods and the satisfaction of a made-up need for an individualist consumption? What is the worker aiming for while performing a task that devour (at least) one third of their existence if not acquiring with money what will allow them to consume, and consequently destroy or use other goods created with the only goal to satisfy them?

Our reading night is an event where we want to get together and share some good readings about the work/consume addiction.
We believe in the importance of experiencing reading as a collective act as a form of resistance and in the empowering feeling that doing so can generate.

Do you feel like sharing a prose text, a poem or your own words with us? Send us an email at barricade@riseup.net

The reading should be max 10 minutes long and can be in whatever language you prefer.
If you don’t feel like reading, join us anyway on Saturday 20 April at 20.30 at AstaroTheatro in Amsterdam to hear some readings about the work/consume addiction.

International avant-garde project “Radio Vostok-2
with the program: ” The escape of an African from Siberia”
Friday 19 April, 20:30

Six participants of this amazing recreate the tragic and strange story of African Mosley Motanga, who in the dashing 90s of the last century stole a locomotive (with him was his friend Roma) and drove it in the winter from Irkutsk to Novosibirsk to meet with his sister.

African ancestral songs, excerpts from Gypsy, French and Siberian folklore, free jazz themes, throat singing and video-a hallucination of the main character, against which there will be dancers and musicians.

This story was listened to and watched by avant-garde fans in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Belgorod, St. Petersburg, Irkutsk, Voronezh, Dusseldorf, Stockholm, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Berlin. In each new city, new musicians participated in the project, and this story looked new.

Musicians: Igor Titenko (tenor saxophone, trumpet, flute, vocals), Stefanie Janssen(vocals), Hernán Samá (tenor saxophone), Björk Níelsdóttir  (vocals , strings),  Pietro Elia Barcellona (double bass), Izabella Pacewicz (performance).

On The Harmful Effects of Tobacco
A Monologue by Anton Chekhov
AstaroTheatro
Sint Jansstraat 37 Amsterdam
Saturday 6 April, 20:30

VideoTeaser by Melanja Palitta / BalansLaB

On The Harmful Effects of Tobacco
A Monologue by Anton Chekhov
Saturday 6 April, 20:30

“It is what it is, it’s all the same to me”, Ivan’s prologue.  Is that ostensible latency the main element of Ivan Ivanovich Nyukhin, the character of the monologue “On the harmful effects of tobacco”?

The plays of Chekhov have definite intensity and the fire of action, but not in an external outline rather than in their internal structure.  Under this ostensible latency and inertia of his characters, is hidden a multifarious and complex activity which is given with original virtuosity and deep knowledge of the psychical temper of every character. Possibly because these characters are mirroring his personal psychical status: the tyrant father, the solitude of his childhood, the loneliness of the boring small town where he grew up. This play is not a comedy either a drama. It is an excellent narrative of an ordinary person, a psychography given in a literary way which reflects the still and depressive life of the delusional society of Tsarist Russia.

The way Ivan is “moving” looks like he lost his orientation in life. There is a force inside him that makes him unmovable. He is giving a lecture on the harmful effects of tobacco though he is smoker himself.  Why?  So many unfulfilled dreams, Don Quixotic ambitions condemned to fail into the dull routine of daily life.

In our interpretation of the play there is something “new”, like the sense of hope that a new born baby is giving.

We welcome you to discover it!

Vasiliki Koutrouli – Roberto Bacchilega

Supporting each other
And endlessly looking for your support

Riace Project – A Theatre Performance
Migrants’ narratives as artistic affirmation of our human dignity and a call for political awareness
A project by AstaroTheatro and International Institute for Research and Education

Riace Project 
Creative Process in Progress
Get ready for our Theatre Performance in May and check our Page! 

Riace Project – A Theatre Performance
Migrants’ narratives as artistic affirmation of our human dignity and a call for political awareness