 When you do understand your life, relationships, death, I've already changed. Welcome to Panama Voices and the Siegel Center. My name is Anja Ödel, I'm one of the co-curators of the festival. Today, tonight is the third of the first day of our play readings and we will be presenting, or we are presenting, eight of the best and most significant dramatists worldwide and I hope you will be joining us tomorrow and on Friday to hear some of the other voices. This festival wouldn't be able to happen without the help, the generous help of our partners and I would like to thank, especially, for tonight's reading, our partners at the Israel Office of Cultural Affairs, Vick Giasov and Aviat Ivli are here tonight with us, so thank you very much. You are about to see a common ground by Yael Ronin, who's here with us tonight. After the reading, we will have a brief discussion with her about the play and her process and I hope you will be able to join us. So enjoy the reading and please turn off your cell phone. Common ground by Yael Ronin. Hello, welcome. Good evening, thank you for coming. My name is Ory Namias, I'm from Israel, I'm Israeli. I was born in Jerusalem and I'm Jewish. I don't always present myself like this. On the contrary, I try to avoid or at least postpone the moment I say where I'm from because I know once I'll say I'm from Israel, I'll be confronted with conversations about released politics, the Holocaust, God and the benefits of the Dead Sea on psoriasis and I'm not always up for it, especially when I'm in a taxi in Merlin and the taxi driver is called Mohammed. I have my concerns. But I thought I should say it tonight because one of the rare benefits of being in Israeli is that when you talk about war, conflict reconciliation processes, peace building and deconflicting, people tend to think you actually know what you're talking about. They take you seriously. I recognize the business opportunity here and I made a career out of it. In the last few years I did many projects with reconciliation groups. I had great successes working with Germans and Jews. But when I tried to apply the same working method to a group of Israelis and Palestinians, it turned out to be total failure. And that had to do with the fact that Palestinians and Israelis disagree on almost every historical event. They have two completely different narratives on the conflict and fundamental differences about how they perceive the truth. I developed a new method, which I like to call the Orid Namias Lokeya herself through someone else's mirror method. A method that encourages recognizing and accepting the multiple versions of reality. This brilliant idea was also complete failure. But it wasn't because of the method, it was because of the people. And I had no choice but to export my method abroad and try it on other conflict groups. I gathered together a group of ex-Jugoslavians who live in Berlin. They don't have two narratives, but six. I traveled with them to Bosnia. Can I have a word? No, I'm doing a monologue and I really would like to finish it. It's really important. I would like to give another perspective here. But I really would like to finish my monologue. Thank you. I appreciate it. What's important for you to understand is that this woman is not the face of our project. She isn't. She's Israeli and not an expert. The problem with Israelis is they analyze and understand the world through their eyes only. They project their problems onto the world and then on top of that they shamelessly force their own opinions onto other people. Before we started the rehearsals, I was a bit concerned about working with people from the Balkans. But I have to say I've been pleasantly surprised. Really great. People were not raping each other in the group, right girls? And nobody came drunk to the rehearsals. No one brought any weapons. I'm sure we were fighting a bit, but we didn't end up burning each other's villages. That really gave me hope. After all, we had 30% serves here and 0% atrocities. That really proves that nations and individuals are capable of changing themselves. As a German, it was really fascinating for me to see how little I knew about this war. Who was fighting who? I knew only the TV images from the news. For example, this one from 1993 where a guy like nothing but skin and bones stands in the concentration camp. And I remember thinking, oh my God, another concentration camp on European soil. Another genocide happens in our backyard. But this time, Germany has nothing to do with it. What a relief. We are no longer the incarnation of evil. And this is why we will be forever grateful to you for this war. 1991, the year of German unification, the rest of the world falls apart. Nirvana releases the album Nevermind. January 15, 1991, Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm begins. American Air Forces strike Iraq. January 17, Iraq fires eight scud missiles on Israel. Three scuds and one patriot missile hit Ramatgan. Orid Namiaz lives in Ramatgan. She is 15 years old. She's still a virgin. On television, they demonstrate how to wear a gas mask and what to do in case of a nerve gas attack. She helps her mother prepare a protected sealed room which is sealed and protected with plastic, tape and a wet towel with baking soda. They all think it's not much of a protection against an unconventional weapon, but nobody dares to say anything. In the middle of the night, there are sirens. The whole family enters Orid's room. Suddenly loud sounds of two explosions right next to the house. Was it chemical? Everybody stares at the cat. It's the only one without a gas mask. Orid's parents get hysterical. They are shitting into a bucket. The cat becomes hysterical, spills the bucket. The radio announces they can take the masks off. They take the masks off. The room smells like shit. They put the masks back on. 1991, civil war breaks out in Somalia. A tropical cyclone, his Bangladesh, 138,000 people dead. June 25, the breakup of Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia declare their independence. Brian Adams releases the song Everything I Do, I Do For You. 1991, Vanessa Berbo is 23. She lives in Sarajevo. Every evening she goes to a club. She's the girlfriend of DJ Gemmo. DJ Gemmo looks like Axl Rose. Vanessa has no interest in politics. Her friends believe that the war will soon come to Bosnia. Vanessa thinks that's bullshit. She decides to stay. Five months later, war breaks out. January 1992, ceasefire between Serbia and Croatia. Bosnia has a governor who declares independence. The Bosnian war breaks out between Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslim. In Algeria, civil war breaks out. In Azerbaijan, civil war breaks out. Desmina is four years old and no one explains anything to her. It has been told to her that her father disappeared. Desmina doesn't understand what that means disappeared. Desmina has heard that other people have disappeared, too. Desmina is afraid that maybe she will also disappear. Desmina's mother now stops money in her little socks and says they must leave. Desmina doesn't want to go without her father. She's afraid that he will not find her when he re-emerges from his disappearance. Desmina's mother wears a little flask around her neck. And this flask, there's poison. It's necessary, there is enough for all of us, she says. But Desmina doesn't understand why poison should be necessary. Nobody explains anything to her. Earthquake in Nicaragua, 116 people dead. Earthquake in Turkey, 560 people dead. IBM presents the first smartphone. Matea is now five years old. Her father moved to Bosnia or Serbia. She doesn't really know. Her mother is very angry. It looks like he won't come back. She's with her father. She doesn't know where he or that is or how she got there. Her mother isn't there, around her only soldiers. They teach her how to raise her three fingers in the air so that everybody sees that she's Serbian. They cut her hair. Now she looks like a boy. She hates it. The soldiers teach her how to hold a weapon. She has a black hole in her memory. She becomes very sick. Her mother comes with her grandpa and the two of them can take Matea away. Now this gate begins. German city of Rostock, Lichtenhagen. For four days, stones fly and Molotov cocktails land on a shelter for asylum seekers. 3,000 neighbors applaud. Neo-Nazis set fire in the German city of Molen. Niels Bohrmann becomes a member of the minority faction of gay anarchists. Bill Clinton elected president of the United States. Itzhak Rabin elected prime minister of Israel. Orit Namias elected Klassensprecherin. And she is no longer a virgin. Basic instinct comes to German movie theaters. Oh, and El Alflight 1862 crashes into a residential building in Amsterdam, killing 50 people in their own beds. The siege of Sarajevo starts. July 92. In Barcelona, the Olympics begin. Vanessa Verbo is 23 and has not showered in two weeks. Her bathroom window was within the range of the sharpshooters. She's lost 15 kilos and a good tooth. She carries it in her bag. In the last two weeks, she has not left the basement. But today, she wants to go outside. In Barcelona, the Olympics are beginning. She needs a new car battery for her television. She wants to be a part of it when the games get canceled during the opening ceremony. How can you celebrate the Olympic games when an Olympic city is burning? She leaves the house. Nobody shoots at her. On the black market, she exchange a gold ring for a Volkswagen Golf battery. The ceremony begins and ends. Nobody says anything. She has to find a way to leave Sarajevo. 1993, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia participate for the first time as independent states at the Eurovision Song Contest in Ireland wins. Czechoslovakia breaks up. Mateja is now six. She's in a Croatian refugee camp in Sabudija with her grandma, where her grandpa is. They don't know. Mateja's mother is in Germany. She sells fries at McDonald's. Mateja is always hungry. She eats nothing but bread with ketchup. In the bathrooms, they're full of maggots. She ships maggots. She is too thin. She takes care of her three-year-old cousin. In the camp, there are many children without parents. Nobody takes care of her. Beyond class, Trebranica has been declared a UN safe zone. USA, the 27-year-old Lorena Bopit cuts off her husband, John Bopit's penis. In Frankfurt, 13-year-old Aleksandar Radekovich masturbates to women's tennis. Earthquake in India, 10,000 people dead. Michael Jackson is accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy. 1994, natural-born killers open in German movie theaters. The genocide in Rwanda begins. A million Tutsis are slaughtered. The war breaks out in Yemen. Civil war in Chechnya. Verneza Berbo is still in Sarajevo. She is stopped at a checkpoint. She can't recognize which sides the soldiers are on from their uniforms. She doesn't know how she should identify herself. A soldier comes down the hill. He has a machete in his hand. He is covered in blood. He wants to see Verneza's papers. He asks where she is from. Verneza's name does not give away that she is Muslim. She says she was born in Serbia. She becomes suspicious. He asks again, what is she? Verneza has an epiphany. She says she is Jewish. The soldier is confused. He lets her go. For the first time since recorded history, admitting to being Jewish saves a life. Kurt Cobain commits suicide. Deon Buessen is hit by a car. Flooding in Germany. Earthquake in Indonesia. Earthquake in Colombia. Earthquake in Algeria. Earthquake in Los Angeles. The Srebrenica Massacre. Over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys are murdered by the Army of the Republic of Serbska. Keredik Milacovic accused of crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Robbie Williams leaves. Take that. Rabin is assassinated. The Dayton Peace Agreement ends. The war in Bosnia. Last year in September, a man called the police in my hometown in the West, Bosnia. He said he had information about where to find the largest mass grave undiscovered until now. It was not an anonymous call. The man went to the police. He admitted to driving a truck that was removing the bodies of victims. He let the investigators to the exact spot and in the newspaper it was quoted that he was somehow relieved. The 15th of November, I received a call. Hello. Hello. Can I speak to my hair? I wanted to ask you something. Who am I speaking to? Who is this? My name is Marco. I'm writing for the Balkan portal. Maybe you've heard of it. I want to ask you something about your father. What about my father? Probably you've heard about the new excavations of mass grave near Tomasya. Yes. You believe that this will have an influence on his political career. The word is that some cases will be reopened in the Hague because of the new evidence. I don't know what you're talking about. I think you're confusing me with someone else. I'm speaking with Mateo, right? I haven't had any contact with my father since I was 13. But you probably know that if the accusations are correct there's a good chance that he'll again be on trial at the Hague. Never call me again. Bye. Hello. Since I was 14, I imagined my phone rings and the voice says I know where your father is. He wants to give me the exact location. I do not want the location. I want to meet the man. I want him to bring me there. I meet him alone. He hides his face under a large hat. He does not want me to see his eyes. We leave the main street. We're both afraid. We both feel that maybe we made the wrong decision. I'm looking for forest. We're both in the forest together with 10 others. Twenty other people. He together with 20 other people was executed. A forest. In this country there are so many trees. Sometimes I feel that the landscape of a country is a silent accomplice in denying crimes. The beauty of nature is always trying to avail the traces of murder. Obstructing justice until someone is broken. 20 years. 23 years. Wakes up after 23 years and must talk. The car stops. It is almost dark but that doesn't irritate him. He knows the way. He's been here before maybe more than once. Maybe every day. Maybe in recent years he returned here. Maybe he drove through here with the family on the way to Sunday picnic. I want him to take off his hat and answer all my questions that have been building up for the last 23 years. What have I done with my father? Who has given the order? What were his last words? And the words before that? I imagine that the man knows the answers to all my questions. He knows all the details and the whole big picture and he talks and talks. Then I imagine that I'm going home alone. I imagine that he comes out of the woods and back to the house and bang! shoots himself in the head. His daughter comes and sees him bang and his wife comes and bang! His son, his mother, his cousin bang! bang! bang! bang! Even his dog bites himself to death. I'm not proud about these thoughts. They do not console me and they don't give me any relief. But what can you do? The thoughts are just there. At first I was shocked then I couldn't believe it. How could such a coincidence occur? This kind of odd this is kind of odd even for Balkans. So far away from home in a foreign country years later two young actresses more or less the same age meet for the first time in an audition. I've asked her where she's from. I'm starting to feel bad. Before I got here I had re-read the article about my father. My father lives in Priyadore. I don't have a father. My father disappeared. I've read the article and it says that my father works in a concentration camp My father was a prisoner in a Moscow. Fuck! What did I do? Why did I say that? Fuck! Why can't I keep my mouth shut for once? My hands are clivering. My mouth is dry. Life is so full of dark humor. There she sits the daughter of a war criminal. There she sits with her blonde hair and her soft green eyes. She's so beautiful and so honest. But she's also fragile and her voice is soft and tender. She overloads me with compliments. She's a real Balkan lady, femme fatale. But what is she seducing me for? The audition is over. I don't want to leave her alone. I invite her for a cup of coffee. We talk, we laugh. I don't want her to go home alone. I don't want to be alone. A state of war inside my body. Who is this person? Does she tell the truth? But why would someone make up something so sick? She says that they haven't been in touch. She was 14. That time she found something. But now she's not sure. She says it could be that it's all lies. She says it could be that it's all propaganda. But she doesn't know. She can't ask anyone. She says maybe she's paranoid. I myself become paranoid. She smiles at me. What does this person want from me? Should I grant her absolution? Does she really think that now we will be friends? Now my body is a battlefield. One part of me wants to run away. Another part of me wants to hug her. I feel connected to her. I see all the unanswered question inside of her. I feel the grief and her pain. And the pain does not let her sleep at night. I wish I could give her relief. I wish I could tell her that it's not her fault that her father did something or others in the war 20 years ago. But I thank her for the coffee and rush home. I am alone on the train. Thinking about the past. About myself as a child. About Jess Meena as a child. About her father. About my father. I'm feeling sick again. I must stop thinking about it when it's dark. I get out of the train and I start running. I'm on the train. I want to call someone but I don't know who. I cannot even remember fragments of her story. I wouldn't even know what I should say. A voice in my head. Don't trust a servant. I'm ashamed about this voice but it's there. I'm coming home. Finally, I cry. I must stop this shitty crying. I will call Matea. I hang up before she answers. I send her a text that if she wants to sleep in Berlin, she's free to come to me. Oh my god. She must think I'm crazy. I'm crazy. I'm too much. I have a feeling that I'm even too much for myself. I can't sleep. I see her and recognize parts of me. We both became fatherless in the war. We are some kind of intimate lost sisters. We are cursed to be five years old forever carrying a war in our bloodstream. I am in Bosnia for the very first time but somehow everything feels so familiar. The winner, for example, has a special smell like burnt air. The first few hours are euphoric. Oh my god. Just me that wants to stand still at the memorial that was built for 1,600 children that were killed in Sarajevo. Almost all the buildings still show traces of war. Everywhere are bullet holes and right next to them newly constructed tall buildings I don't understand. Even on the sidewalks are bullet holes from the grenades. They're filled with red concrete so you can see there was a shooting here. Jasmin explains to Orit and Niels that there are mostly Muslim names he inscribed. I have the impression the propaganda part where our journey starts. My body starts to shake nervously. I can't believe I killed two year olds. I think I was my little Jonathan. Orit starts to weep. Vanessa tells us how they buried the dead under the playground. Tennis court. Yeah, buried them on the playground because you couldn't get through the cemetery because the snipers were shooting there. She tells us how one tennis court after the other and every free spot in town became an improvised cemetery. After the war many people buried their loved ones in the cemetery but many bodies stayed in the tennis courts. Maybe there was no one left who could move them. All of a sudden Dion starts to weep. I read the metal from this monument comes from old bullet shells. They were collected from all over town and then melted. I find this ecological thinking really great. On the way back to the hotel Vanessa remembers a story. Shortly after the war started there were suddenly a few days of calm. My friend and I wanted to see what the town looked like. We went for a walk with our dog. The city couldn't be recognized anymore. So much was destroyed. Many stores were destroyed or looted. Our dog was a beautiful large black Labrador. She was named Vanga. We see a very old man in front of one of the destroyed stores. The old man says you are so lucky that you have such a nice fat dog. You should eat. You should eat him before he dries up. In Stalingrad we ate those dogs. They were delicious. I tell him Vanga is like our child we would never eat her. And by the way we are not in Stalingrad. The siege will be over soon for sure. And my friend says and if not we could always eat the pigeons the city is full of them. And the old man says yes. One starts with the pigeons and ends with the dogs. Come. Oh God she ate her dog. We had to let her go. We had nothing left to eat. And when a dog in times of war becomes astray he can't come back. Why? There were so many corpses in the river it was impossible to bury them. The dogs were hungry and then oh well the dogs ate them. And at a certain point the dogs can no longer distinguish between living and dead people and then they become aggressive. We all imagine how we eat our pets. Or how they ate us. Johnny. Blondie. Zulka. Nilsi. You have a pet that's called Nilsi? Yes I named it after you. Oh might take that as a compliment. You should. He's a beautiful cat. A bit slow on the head and bad instincts but beautiful. We are in Sarajevo for only five hours and I'm already depressed. I'm entering an antique shop. I buy myself a key chain of the Sarajevo Olympic Games of 84. I steal an original Nazi belt with a swastika. Nobody should pay for those things. Go out and get myself a tetra pack of red wine. I finish it all in one schluck. We go over the bridge where Gavrilo shot Prince Franz Ferdinand. No shit this is the bridge where Franz Ferdinand was shot. Gavrilo? We have to wait for Franz Ferdinand who must no matter what take a panoramic photo with his new iPhone? You can superimpose a filter here. I had a spinning. I want to throw up. I imagine every man I see is a war criminal and a rapist. Every woman is a victim of rape and every teenager is a child of rape. Here we stop again and wait till Ord finishes her crying fit. We stay at the legendary holiday inn. I'm in Rue 314 on the street in which Radhavan Karkadvich had his headquarters in 1992. Radhavan Karadich was the leader of the Bosnian Serbs and is now on trial in the Hague. My room 352 is directly above the room from which Karadich's snipers shot at protesters in 1992. Here was the first invisible front line. My room 401 is on the fifth floor 28 meters above the street. If I had to escape now and knotted together the curtains and bed sheets I could lower myself about 8 meters fuck. I will not survive that. I should have taken my climbing road with me from Germany. I am in room 421 the air is sticky and old. You can barely breathe. I know I will not be able to fall asleep. For two hours I play on the computer World of Warcraft till my eyes burn. Then I go down to the bar. The keeper tells me that the employees of the hotel have not been paid in the last six months. He complains about the catastrophic economic situation in Bosnia. I order a beer. All of a sudden I say to myself fuck. How much should I tip him? If it is too much he thinks I am an arrogant Serb who lives in Germany but also I don't want him to think that I am cheap. He knows my Serbian dialect. I make a big difference to him that I am a Serb. Then he asks me what am I doing? I say I am an actor. He says no, no. What do you do to make a living? And all of a sudden he gives me my tip back. I cannot fall asleep. I am in room 346. The world is too thin. I hear whisper. I think I hear a woman weeping. Or is it a baby? For a moment I don't know if these noises are real or not. I am afraid alone here in the room but I am ashamed which is why I don't tell the others. I decide to go down to the bar. The barkeeper asked about my life in Berlin. He worked in the hotel for 25 years. It is worse now than it was during the war. During the war he said that this was the best job in the worst area. The hotel was always fully booked with foreign journalists. Who paid with dollars and gave big tips. They love this hotel because they didn't have to go out to the war. The war just came to them. One by one we found our way to the bar. The barkeeper doesn't want to work. He wants to talk and then I say to him come on man up and make me some tea. When she realizes that the employees of the hotel have not been paid for half a year she wants to organize a strike immediately. Vanessa could you please hold off organizing the strike till our departure please? The barkeeper says the war in Bosnia is not over. The war wandered from the street into the heads of the people. I don't understand. The barkeeper says as long as there is no justice as long as their perpetrators are not punished that's how long the war will go on in the heads of the people. But you do have the war crime tribunal in the Hague? No. No war crime tribunal. No the Hague. Maybe better say it right away. Serbia must die. There will be no justice if only one nation is made responsible for the war. Don't exaggerate. Also many Croatians were accused. Oh please how many Croatians were accused? Ante Gotavna. Ante Gotavna was accused but he was released. He runs through Croatia like a national hero and everywhere his fucking picture has been hung on the wall. Maybe by idiots Alexandra and idiots as I see it they're also in Serbia. Don't touch mine. He was accepted as a totally normal president despite the fact that he has a lot of blood in his hands. Stop quiet Nils. 50,000 raped women were not discussed in the Hague. Milan Lukic didn't even go to trial for being a rapist. Like this guy in my village in Tarkov he killed 200 people. He was accused in the Hague, was 10 years in prison and then was released because of good behavior. Now he's back in the village. He's like saying people died and then he gets 20 years. Then he sits for a year. Then the whole case reopens and then after two years he is free again. And you ask yourself every time where is justice for the victims? I don't give a shit about judgment. I think that every single fighter who raped women, who murdered children, who looted should go to prison. Who doesn't want that? So why does no one make that happen? This is impossible. I mean you can't find and punish every single sniper. Do you know what's impossible? You know that your mailman was guarded in the concentration camp. You know exactly what he did. And you know that he now has a family and a normal life and you don't. Or for example, before they brought him to prison they let him visit his daughter's grave. This was a condition. Otherwise he wouldn't have extradited himself but would have killed himself and you would have no justice. If he was not his father and not as the monster that he really was they should never have allowed him to visit her grave. We must preserve humanity even if it's for somebody like Rad Komulovic. To me he's not human. If someone is not human then he should not be treated humane either. Why is he allowed to visit the grave of his daughter when I don't even have a grave for my father? Did I say something wrong? I have to interrupt you guys about what's happening. Your war was way too chaotic and really badly organized. We need some facts. Let's start with a map of ex-Yugoslavia. This is a map of ex-Yugoslavia so here is the Adriatic Sea and there is Italy and let's say above here is Croatia all along the coastline and the Republic of Scribska they're like a banana. Yeah, yeah. But the Republic of Scribska is a part of Bosnia and here it is going. So all of this is Bosnia? Yeah. This is Serbia and there above is Slovenia and then Slovenia declares it's independence. Bye-bye Icovicski. Then Croatia declares it's independence and then there was a fight with Serbia. Yeah, yeah. But at that time there was what remained of Yugoslavia. Remained? What remained of Yugoslavia? What else was there? Well there was Macedonia in Montenegro. You can touch it. No, thanks. Anyway, this here is Montenegro. Is this where the Montenegros come from? Montenegrums. Montenegrums. Nils please. Yeah, but before the war it was all a mix. Serbs lived in Croatia and Croatians in Serbia and Bosnia Serbs Bosniaks, Macedonians Montenegrums all lived there all mixed. This is really insanely complicated no one gets it and I had to hear about it for two months but there are really no help. For example, when I asked Dion where he comes from he said I come from Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore Dion Finito. Okay, I'm from Belgrade. I was born in Belgrade. Then you are a Serb. Yeah, not also. Why also? Nils, it's complicated. You see my ancestors came from Sicily one part of the family moved to Croatia my great grandfather married a half Croatian half Hungarian my great grandmother which is my great grandmother and then they had three children the first son married a Slovenian and they had moved to Croatia the second son married Croatian and they also in Zagreb and the daughter married a Montenegro she moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia they had three sons the first married a Montenegro they lived in Montenegro the second married a Serbian and the third is my father my father was born in Bosnia but grew up in Serbia there he met a Bosnian my mother her ancestors came from Bosnia but my mother grew up in Serbia my mother has two sisters my one aunt is married to a Serbian they lived in Slovenia the other aunt is married to an Albanian they live in Kosovo my parents have two children my sister in the census my sister counted as a Bosnian because both parents were born in Bosnia but my parents and I were counted as Serbs even so I was put down that I'm Yugoslav my sisters didn't like it you know that she was counted as a Bosnian so she put down that she is Montenegro it doesn't matter in Serbian anyway everyone sees me as German I applied for a German citizenship I guess it's not so complicated after all the next day we got up at 5 o'clock in the morning we have a five and a half hour trip ahead of us to Priador the town where Jasmine and Mattea are from everyone goes downstairs I make a decision I will call my father I recognize my father's voice on the phone I say it's me I say I read the articles about him being a war criminal and I want to know if this is true he says I should not believe one word it's all propaganda he has political rivals and they would all do anything to hurt him even spread rumors and lies about him he asked me 10,000 times if I need money and he says 10,000 times that he loves me I tell him that I am in Bosnia and on the way to Priador he is surprised because he is in town right now he is at a very important meeting out of town but he could send someone in the car to pick me up so that we can see each other for an hour I answer I am here with the group I have no time he asks again if I need money he says that he can send me some he wants me to give him my number so that we can keep in touch he says that he loves me I say that I have to go now I hang up my knees are shaking Mateo, you are 15 minutes too late I brought barrack for everyone to eat Vanessa sits in front besides the driver when she is excited or very emotional she talks nonstop she will go on rambling uninterrupted for the next five and a half hours all of a sudden or it sits next to me I want to talk to Alex about his anger Alex I notice you have a lot of anger I think you should talk to someone you should let it out you can talk to me I am a very good listener Lucky for me I brought my earplugs I am waiting for the right moment to put them in or it wants to analyze the different reactions of the group I take the earplugs out of my backpack and play around with them or it understands and moves away from me to make sure no one else sits next to me I take out my book and pretend that I am reading I tell Niels that we will meet the people from the commission on missing person and that I will give a blood sample they can collect my DNA they have said that the newly discovered mass grave by Tomaski might be the last hope to find my father but I should not expect too much because the more time passes the smaller the probability of my finding him and identifying him there are just not enough resources because the international attention has now shifted towards Syria Niels asks me Do you always think dead the second you hear disappeared I tell him that only when I turned 14 did I understand that disappeared meant dead Yeah but you never thought that he might have been abducted Well he was abducted he was taken by the Chetniks Yeah but you never thought that maybe he was abducted in a different sense What sense? By something not human I can't follow Niels thoughts and I am also not sure if I want to I tell him that I am tired and that I am asleep too bad I just wanted to tell her something important but she might also not be ready for it yet I don't want to give her any false hope and definitely not right now also Oh Alex is awake I am sure he can digest my story Through my earplugs I hear Niels tell me something about the ex-piles from the TV series with Agent Scali and Mulder He asked me if I remember that the aliens were really a big thing in the 90s At that time there was so much evidence of extraterrestrial activities on Earth He asked me what are the chances that this happened exactly at the time of the ex-Yugoslavian war don't you think that's funny I have no idea what he is rambling about Alex understood me right away I tell him that back then I was a member of a UFO club in the city of Bremen where we collected data about UFO sightings in Germany in the heart's forest I slept for four hours in the car and when I woke up my ashtray was empty and since then my finger and toenails have been growing much faster and I have to go to the bathroom more and I can dilate my pupils by myself He makes such a strange connection between those who went missing in the war like Jasmine's father and his story I really hope he won't tell anyone in Bosnia about that Alex has the earplugs in I decide never to tell the story to anyone ever again Humanity is not ready for this topic After four and a half hours I think the bus driver has had enough of me His ears are bleeding I have inundated him with stories about my children I try to distract myself I'm afraid of pre-ador Again, cemeteries, mass graves concentration camps Man, maybe it was a mistake to be part of a project like this I don't know what to talk to I call out to Dion to sit next to me The next victim For some reason, Dion is like a son to me and he is so beautiful Vanessa shows me the skeletons of the burnt houses along the sidewalk I ask myself if I should walk if I should talk to her about my doubts about the project I'm afraid that all our tolerant and liberal talk will end up in an even more superficial view which already exists in Germany back in the nineties How can you understand the conflict if you only look at one side of the war anyway How can you understand a five-year war on a five-day trip to three cities but I decided to keep these thoughts to myself or it wakes up and sits next to us She doesn't understand how the Republic of Spurska can be a part of Bosnia How can a country be inside another country? It's not inside That's the result of the war agreement So you have the Bosnian So they're Bosnian The Serbian population So they're Serbian Bosnian Serbs Let me start Before that The Constitution of I catch myself again trying to make sense of the absurdity of this country All of a sudden a car cuts us off Both drivers get out You know what? I'll fuck your sister in her giant cavity I'll fuck your mother's burg I'll fuck your left stinking sock Oh I'll fuck the suit you made out of Jesus' bones I'll fuck the first row at your funeral So what now? Do you have insurance? Uh Yeah, I am. Let's go This is insane I'm so impressed by this culture The nation, the creativity, the humor Amazing German anger so anally fixated asshole, ass face shit cunt anal general, anal admiral, anal jackal That must mean something but I don't know what I asked myself if it was a mistake to call my father I asked myself if he told the truth I remember that I was 14 when I was less at Piedor On New Year's Eve I was totally drunk I asked my cousins all sorts of questions Why does he have so much money? Why does everyone around here have none? Why does he have so many bodyguards? Why does he have so many cell phones? What did he do in the war? All my cousins said simply is not such nice things In 10 minutes we are in Piedor Hooray We are in Piedor I recognize it Here is the house of my father or at least the house he lived in and the dining in the window What if I just get out of the bus and just like that ring the doorbell The bus drives past the house I'm getting dizzy It feels like I'm leaving my body hovering above it My body just keeps going like a machine but I'm not there We drive through Jezmina's old village It starts to rain The spot here is a small cemetery with a large stone monument at the entrance The man who waits for us here Possibly he's a distant cousin of Jezmina's who she's never seen She told us that he survived the massacre in her village Subba and his father were deported and brought to a concentration camp Subba survived this too His father didn't What a strange name, Subba That means fate Subba says he wants to show me something He shows us a stone memorial engraved with all the names of the people from his village who died in the war I see my last name over and over again I stopped counting by number 37 I had such a big family Subba points out one of the names It is my father For the first time I see the name of my father on a stone memorial I sense everyone staring at me I'm getting dizzy It feels like I'm leaving my body hovering above it My body just keeps going like a machine I'm not there Subba tells us that the cemetery and the memorial were erected on a private plot of land Private? Why that? An old couple donated the plot of land They lost two sons in the war They had hoped that if the sons were found the bodies could be buried there Why do you need a private plot of land to build a cemetery or a memorial? Or it has the same question but she doesn't dare to ask We must get back to the bus where the concentration camp was I stepped in mud everywhere I want to clean my shoes but this fucking mud is stuck to my shoes like it will never come off After I finally cleaned my shoes I suddenly realized how senseless it was The bus stops again in the middle of a village It takes us time to realize that this is the place Next to an open field are two freestanding buildings One is in good shape the other is falling apart in the soccer field Supe says, here it is Once there was a barbed wire around the entire ground Supe says he doesn't know how long he was held captive in the camp It could be anywhere from a couple of days to a month In hell you have no sense of time There's no stone memorial or any kind of sign that indicates that there was ever a concentration camp here Supe points out the intact building behind these walls being interrogated and raped The building used to be a school and is a school again A school? I don't get it On the ground right next to the school stands something that looks like a memorial an eagle in the form of a cross Supe says I should get closer and read what is written on the plaque To the fighters who gave their lives to the foundation of the Republic of Srpska What? What does that mean? It's as if there was a it's as if there were a memorial to SS soldiers in Auschwitz You get it Nils Before we depart for Bosnia Vanessa wants us to meet with Bakira Hasekic Bakira is the founder of an organization that fights for women's rights who are victims of rape during the war Bakira herself is a rape victim The room is full of smoke Bakira chain smokes like she can't breathe without a cigarette in her mouth Her face barely moves when she speaks It is impossible to tell how old she is or what she thinks or feels Bakira doesn't speak English I must translate everything she says for Nils and Orit She tells us how her city of Weizgrad was taken by the Serbian Army and then controlled by the Bosnian Sermon paramilitary She tells us about the rape of her daughter which she had to witness She tells us about her own rape at the police station by the notorious war criminal Milan Lukic She tells us about another rape and then another She tells us she does not spare the details I must translate everything she says Vian speaks with a strong Belgrade accent and I ask myself how it is for Bakira to hear her story from the mouth of a Serbian man Her monologue is well prepared She's almost too professional It appears as if she has told a story every damn day for the last 20 years I catch myself wondering how much of it is really true and how much has been changed twisted or distorted by the memory and yes I am ashamed of these thoughts I have the impression that as Meena and Orit are monitoring my reactions whenever Bakira says the word Serb or Czechnik They're staring at me like that too It makes me crazy What do they want me to do to feel something here in front of them Should I feel myself guilty attacked, responsible or what I'm overwhelmed that I actually feel all of that Exactly that It makes me angry at myself I, Alexander Rodenkovich have to do with a despicable war criminal like Balan Lukovic I wish him nothing but pain the worst torture in hell but then I have that feeling that Bakira somehow associates me with him Why am I hurt every time they say the Serbs or Serb Why do I take everything so personally Why is this all of a sudden about me and why the hell does Orit stare at me all the time Why do I have the impression that Dion doesn't have these problems He just translates the text as if the entire story has nothing to do with him The woman next to Bakira her assistant she's young maybe a couple of years older than me She runs around like crazy with papers as evidence then she takes them away she points at the things hanging on the wall then suddenly she talks she has a fragile voice like a teenager she says they've killed everything inside her they've killed her destroyed her and I can't speak my voice is trembling Bakira looks at me with surprise I know I don't smoke Dion cries in a strange way I feel betrayed I am extremely lonely I envy the victim's position in my head I go through all the massacres that were committed during this war in Serbia I want Orit and Niles to hear all the horror stories of this war so that their blood will freeze in their veins stories about things that were done to us fuck what is this us which us what am I talking about since when have I become a side in that war all of a sudden I have the urgent need to look for my German passport in my backpack I can't find it I feel extremely lost Orit still controls me I would like to punch her I can't stand it anymore her terrible stories the smoke in the room I can hardly breathe every once in a while I'm looking at Alexander's beautiful face it calms me down I'm trying to think happy sexy beautiful thoughts Alexander looks back at me as if I raped his cat what's wrong with him I'm going out Bakira now tells us about the latest campaign of her organization they have built a memorial to commemorate the 76 Bosnian children and elderly people who were burned alive in a basement for years the house was a ruin there was no indication that people were murdered here Bakira collected money so that the house could be rebuilt so the bones of the beloved burned people would not be washed away by the rain so their families would have a place to bring flowers and pray they also have erected a stone memorial that reads memorial for all killed and missing Bosniaks children women and men victims of the genocide in Visigrad the authorities of the Republic of Serbska did not like this initiative Bakira says that they will come home tomorrow and chisel away the word genocide Nils makes me crazy with all his questions about what happened in the house I mean I tell him they were burnt alive but he wants to know exactly he wants to know how they did it technically I mean I wish he would just keep his mouth shut I don't understand why this question is not okay what are the specific details that make up the whole Bakira goes on uninterrupted and I'm literally lost in translation I need a break I go to the bathroom I lean against the bathroom door my head in my hands I want to stay here until the meeting is over I can't go back when we were packing up and saying goodbye I remembered how I heard Bakira for the first time I was a young woman in Berlin newly married to a German so I could help her to translate a witness account of a young woman who will testify in the Hague against Milan Lukic at the time I didn't talk at all about the war I didn't know how to deal with it I received a cassette with Bakira's voice where she tells her story I needed to listen again and again and again I had to rewind and start from the beginning from head to toe she left no detail out when I was finished with the translation I wanted to get to know her now that I've got to know her I have the feeling I must begin to tell my story Bakira said to me I must take the drapes off the window now I do that too the meeting is over I go to Bakira I say goodbye suddenly I feel such sadness am I connected I listen when I say to her I'm so so sorry I apologize, forgive me and it's the only time in Bosnia that I could burst in tears I could feel the tears coming I turn around and I go away and I hear how Vanessa says to me Alex, you should not be the one apologizing I am did you ever feel to be really brutally punched in the face really brutally I mean like someone kicking you brutally in the skull so you can taste your own blood fill your eyes begin to swell were you ever really afraid I mean real fear not some kind of oh my god my iPhone dropped I hope it's still working I mean such a fear where you shit in your pants because you fear you will die I have that longing a man who is highly functional always diplomatic never mean always considerate who listens to his wife and goes shopping with her does the dishes and self reflects and who is not ashamed to weep who goes to therapy who will grow a beard at need to be so he can hide the 7 year old child he really is this is what I am the child who was always told not to be too loud that he shouldn't attract any attention to himself he should blend in he should assimilate fucking asylum seeker the child who was so deeply ashamed his father from the Balkans because his Balkan manners were too rude because his voice always sounded too loud the child who pretended that the man was walking next to him with the strong accent was a stranger I was not there in the 90s I was protected I was in Germany I went to school I took vacations to Serbia I sat in at the Danube drank Coca Cola 38.4 kilometers away people were dying my parents wanted to protect me from all that whore they wanted me to have a normal life even though nothing was normal anymore I remember 1999 I am in Berlin I am 19 years old my father, my aunts, my cousins my grandmas, grandpas all of them down there NATO bombed Serbia they live in their basements they're afraid I just turned 19 I work as a flight attendant I fly through the whole world my family gets bombed to pieces I am in South Africa and go on safari my family gets bombed to pieces every every evening I go to clubs, my family gets bombed to pieces I'm totally drunk so black out drunk that I fall five meters from a cliff in Athens down into the ocean I am not hurt my family bombed to pieces I am a fashion victim my family gets bombed I don't know what I should study my family gets bombed life bores me my family gets bombed I throw my money out the window my family gets bombed I am concerned about my hair my family gets bombed to pieces the day of the departure we get up at six o'clock in the morning and drive to Sarajevo Sarajevo airport because Orit insist on being there three and a half hours early I thought they would take security checks more seriously here there was a war Muslims live here you are no longer in Israel Orit yesterday someone broke into my hotel room the door frame and the chain were broken with force nothing was stolen nothing was searched but someone was there why my door was that meant for me does this have something to do with my father am I paranoid now all of a sudden all kinds of sentences shoot through my head my mother has said I should not say my last name in Bosnia am I paranoid Orit says this is just a coincidence I slept in her room she locked the door three times and placed the chair in front of it I want to leave all of this behind me I say this sentence over and over and over again and I ask myself if all of that is possible I want to go home I call my mother and tell her that I am on my way home I am surprised how naturally this sentence come over my lips I fought with it for so many years whether or not something like home really exists for me Berlin gave me security I know that when I arrive I will be able to fall asleep again maybe that is what a home is a place where you are safe enough to close your eyes before passport control I look at my passport and I see a photo of Justina the woman at check-in had mixed us up and our passports when we give our identities back to ourselves I think it is all a matter of chance in a parallel world I must live Mattea's life and she must be Justina I found my German passport it was in the bag with the dirty laundry I also have my Serbian passport with me I always take both passports with me when I travel but no matter which passport I present I always feel like a spy with a fake identity I stick my German passport back in my backpack today I travel into Germany so Vanessa looks at me and cracks up in the duty free shop I buy totally overpriced toys for my two daughters I always feel guilty when I am away for more than a couple of days my girls grow up in Germany they know that their mom comes from Bosnia they know that their mom is sometimes sad because of something that has something to do with Bosnia and the war I ask myself what and when I should tell my girls about the war for the first time I was a tourist in Bosnia I lived in Bosnia in a hotel for the first time I depart and have the feeling that Bosnia is no longer a country that is mine now it is ethnically divided the Republic of Serbska has almost been ethnically cleansed of Bosniaks the Bosnian Federation is almost ethnically cleansed of Serbs Serbia is almost ethnically cleansed of Croatians Croatia is almost ethnically cleansed of Serbs and all of them live like shit on the day of our departure Bosnia burns all throughout the country demonstrations and protests begin Bosnians, Muslims, Serbs Croatians, all united in their anger against the three-part government structure which just doesn't work they demand a chance for life and dignity, work and the end of corruption in the news I see a photo where demonstrators wave three flags next to each other the Croatian this gives hope it is as if Tito's old motto fraternity and unity of the old Yugoslav nations took on a whole new meaning there must still be something stronger that unites us how else can you explain the Serbus, best friend is a Serb that Vanessa says I'm like a son to her and that Matea don't make a move without each other that my best friend is a Croatian that I always have these special connections with people from Yugoslavia no matter from which side it looks like we can't live without each other and we can't live we can't live with each other and we can't live without each other I hope the latter carries more weight at the airport I start to read the book I brought with me the last generation by Arthur C. Clarke the story starts with a friendly alien invasion of the earth to save mankind from itself and its destructive ideas the first thing the aliens do is destroy any form of nationalism the aliens are totally right the destructive idea of nationalism grows rampant in the consciousness of people like cancer we're not even in the position to detect this tumor but from now on I pray that this alien invasion will still happen in my lifetime now I'm going to buy an apple juice I'm going back to my new home in Berlin but for the first time since I moved there two years ago I'm homesick Bosnia made me miss Israel Neil's things I'm just seeing the world through my narrow-minded Israeli eyes my country's tattooed on my body it sits there it's a natural part of my body and no matter how far I go it will always be there like an ex-boyfriend who could never give me what I want but doesn't let me start a new life with someone else it was so relieving to look in the mirror and not see myself yes we are not the center of the world and we are not the most fucked up I guess all happy countries resemble one another but every sad country has its own special way it sounds better in Russian or in German thank you so much and thank you so much Charlotte Brethwaite our director in the back we will have a discussion now no so thank you so much Charlotte for this terrific meeting so I would like to start with a question for Yael now you're from Israel you live and work in Germany most of the time what started the evolution of supply so what interested you about that subject matter of former Yugoslavia actually the answer is pretty much in the opening monologue of the piece because for many years I was talking about or trying to deal with Israeli politics through theater like she says in a way I made my career trying to do art through conflict groups especially around the Israeli subjects and at one point first of all because I realized that there is something to it that I felt both in my private life and how it resonates back there is a possibility to create some kind of an alternative dialogue with this conflict groups and I wanted to create myself and other perspective and it started as a very ambitious idea to do some kind of network which would be called conflict zone and actually to go into conflict zone and to try to create dialogue groups through art and Exegoslavia was chosen the first one the most before the war in Syria it was the most recent I would say big catastrophe of the last years also happening in Europe and it is the second biggest community of migrants in Berlin so there were actually a lot of still vibrating stories to be told there and the fact that in a way looking from my narrow minded Israeli perspective to look back at the result of a war that was so called resolved and was resolved with an ethnical division to see if it is actually a solution that if you resonated back into the Israeli Palestinian conflict to look at what are the possible results of this kind of ethnical division and if it is really a solution for a war so you not only wrote the piece you also directed its first production the production of premiered in Berlin last year in 2014 tell us a little bit about the process so how did you work basically and I think it is important also in order to understand the reading I don't write text and then bring it to actors so I usually don't even look at my pieces as text my pieces are projects so it's almost impossible sometimes to separate text from the production that's why I think it becomes kind of blurry when you hear it in a reading and also with the way I work specifically in this kind of project I work a lot with the biographies of the actors so in a way this piece is almost somewhere between the commentary theater so it brings also another questions about theater about what is acting what is truth about people sitting there and trying to understand if this is because in a way the actors are playing with their own names on stage and some of them with their own biographies we are mixed but people are really and working with their own real wounds and people feel that they feel it's a therapeutic process for those specific actors something that could not really happen when you take the text as a text and bring it to other people that has to play those wounds so in a way this process is a process of creating a healing project that is happening to the actors and I think that project resonate into the audience and for me this is the power of the original work almost really like a cathartical process of all that's happening process that's happening well that actually is a nice bridge over to question to you Charlotte so what would be the challenge because of its the form that's in it well I did think it was very interesting when I received the script and I thought to myself you know there's always in the work that I do always questions of representation who gets to be represented who gets to be seen, who gets to tell the story and I think it's really interesting to do a piece that's about conflict resolution because in this country we have many levels of conflicts that are way unresolved so for me finding a group of actors who in some ways in their bodies and their biographies or in their potential biographies by way they come from or maybe their ancestors have come from I thought that was interesting to think about also you know in terms of I mean you know we think of like disasters that require conflict in this country I mean it's like people are getting dirty water people are being put in prison I mean there's just you know I think the racial and the class differences that exist in this country and you know if we think of the situation of the Native Americans and their lack of representation in spaces like this I mean I think a lot about all of those kinds of things so for me I think you know it was a process of you know first of all trying to you know share a little bit about like the Yugoslavian conflict I lived in Europe for a long time so a lot of the issues of the conflict were familiar to me and so that was interesting in thinking about you know neighbors killing neighbors and how that could be a further conversation even beyond a reading you know to have with a group of actors from different backgrounds so you know I think you know it's like the beginning of something it's the beginning of a thought process and I think it was an interesting time to work on thinking about these issues it was also a really interesting way of staging it really having a confrontation so the actors were constantly looking at each other but like really communicating that I thought that was really interesting idea so well you know there's like this I guess there's a reading part of this reading is it's a show right but I feel like we're at the beginning of a rehearsal process we received a ton of edits today that's part of it you know it's like we're in conversation still and so for me it wasn't about creating something that's oh this is all finished it's like okay we're still working so we've got our scripts, we've got our pens, we've got our paper our water and we're looking across at each other and you know someone's helping someone to pronounce the name of some place I mean it's all kind of out there and it's for me it was important to not try to you know make it feel like a show it's just like we're having this conversation and we're trying to we're trying to understand right yeah especially because the work is so personal from where it starts right so it would almost be a process of like needing a whole new group of actors to meet those actors and okay who are you you know it's not characters they're playing you know how do you play real people in a way one of the topics also of the work is about group dynamic and in a way it's something that is very hard to make it other group is a group and of course when you take a bunch of people and put them together you have to make them into a group and that's why we had this initiation journey in a way that turned this bunch of people into a group I just want to really thank the actors thank you guys so much for jumping into this thank you absolutely now the piece coming ground was very successful in Germany it was invited to the theater troupe in 2015 and you're working well and I don't know if it's the latest but one of the latest plays is going to be in the upcoming theater troupe which is kind of unusual for a theater maker to be presented in the festival so in a row so tell us a little bit about the new project and what you're working on currently the last one I mean it's not the last it's one of the last I've made a few shows afterwards but I think what happened with this show I wouldn't choose it I have to say to the theater troupe it's definitely not one of my best works this year but it had great timing and because it's a work that is dealing with a neighborhood in Berlin Neukölln which for me it's like the little Middle East is a place where you can find a lot of people from Lebanon Palestine Israel and Syria people who would usually would never be able to meet to live have a shared life suddenly they have this kind of neighborhood that creates this dynamic and now there was a big wave of Syrian obviously coming there and what happened when we started rehearsals on the subject and it became a project a lot about migration and about migrants from the Middle East so we had one Syrian actor that just arrived really from the war and all the people in the project were people who did not speak German yet and most of them were really less than a year in Berlin so everybody actually in rehearsals rehearsals was the last thing on their mind everybody was still pretty much in survival mode and trying to rearrange their life in Berlin so we had one girl from Jamin we had one boy that actually the reason to bring him to Gorky was to the theater was because I got some phones from some peace activist about a very sweet young boy who's doing pakor but he really wants to try to get a visa out of Palestine and it doesn't manage so if I can just say that he's going to bring pakor workshop so he would be able to live so I said okay we'll bring him for a workshop and so he would get a visa to live Palestine and we brought him and we fell in love with him and said you're staying here so we had a boy that didn't even intend to to be part of the theater we had Orit again an Israeli girl and we had my ex husband that at the time we were separating and he's an Israeli Arab so in a way we also brought our story of being a mixed couple and being a mixed couple who is separating over non-political reasons so it became a very both personal and documentary project as well and we brought one more one actor from the theater who has who's like you see him you think he's German he's speak obviously perfect German but in his background he himself came for Kazakhstan also in the beginning of the 19th and you know he's a super success story of a migrant like he's the symbol of integration in a way and since he was the only one who was speaking German we decided that our only shared experience is German courses and this is also the place where actually all those you go to the course and there you meet the people suddenly from you sit next to the people from Syria and Lebanon which you would never usually have a dial with so that was the background of the play and the dynamic that actually happens inside this German course what was the question exactly what this piece was about what you're working on right now are there any questions from the audience wow this is really powerful and it just touches you with its empathy how you directed it and how you wrote it I've been working on a documentary for 10 years called the other side of war which I've been filming these two Bosnian women and what their life was like in Bosnia during the war because I figured as adults we glorify war but as children they see war and so you had that dynamics there which really was impressive my question is what did you learn when you went through this experience both of you because here you are doing with Americans from different cultures who are still slavery is still alive and well in the United States as we know I'm just when you were directing what was that like for Bosnia I have to say that for me I do also sometimes very rarely I do plays written plays but for me those kind of projects are the most important and the one that became really shifting points in my life and through those kind of work I really found out the power of art as a healing tool and if I really try to take it as a group therapy and really think that eventually the show is a byproduct of this process so actually what happens usually in the first month we're doing things that are totally not connected to theater we're doing research together we're doing a lot of Reiki and massage we're doing a lot of psychological process together and really the idea is for me that when a group therapy become very very powerful honest and authentic on stage it has very very strong waves that manage to touch in a profound and healing way the audience and so in the projects that I I feel myself powerful enough to go through it's really projects of transformation and it's always like each project like this is like taking a pill which opens your eyes a bit more and then you can't see reality anymore the same way you can't go back the moment you become politically aware the moment you go through those those things it's very interesting to see what happens to actors which actually have to play their deepest wounds on stage over and over again for example I want to tell something about the original production with the roles of the two girls which are real stories the daughter of the war criminal and the daughter whose father is missing the actress whose father was a war criminal in rehearsals whenever she had to tell her own stories she could never complete a sentence because she would burst in such deep crying she could never tell her story so our decision in order to get over this almost technical barrier was to switch the roles that in the show there the only one who was actually playing each other roles and we thought it was also some kind of a very therapeutical thing for them because in a way each one in her own private life one had to play the role to play the character of a daughter of a war criminal with whatever it means and one had to play the role of a daughter whose fighting to find her missing father and in a way it was such a relief or a healing thing for them to play the other perspective as horrible as it could be and it was very interesting to see how triggers for crying that used to happen on stage would change through time if somebody for example the actress who told the real story for example about the dog it was usually the point the specific story about the dog where she would really break apart because apparently she had very strong images connecting to this story and I remember the first show when she was suddenly telling the story for the first time and being overwhelmed that this time she didn't cry and what happened to this wound which was always you know and then she tried the next show and suddenly she didn't cry again but then she started crying in another point so it's really seeing how it have a very deep healing effect which is changing the show very much from one show to another and it creates real tension on stage because people are actually handing out emotional triggers to each other for real and they're doing it with a lot of fear because there was show where people were in the age of breaking someone would start crying and you didn't know if you would manage to say the next line or not so there is a real tension happening on stage about how would people react with this time I'm aggressive with that so it's for me those kind of projects are the most interesting perspective to deal with theater yeah I think one of the lines that stands out for me in the play Alex says it Cornelius he says I am a man and you know that's kind of a slogan I think that was you know very prominent during the civil rights era and recently in the 90s artists have used 2000s African American artists have used that in their work those words I am a man and I think a lot that you know being present right being present in spaces like this where people are actually having conversations about truth and reconciliation allowing those conversations to echo through different bodies I mean I still think that's like a very strong idea and I think that I come from the mama theater and Ellen Stewart used to say like theater is the international language and I think it's because there are stories within everybody's story that we can share and that can connect us as human beings and I think probably if we spent more time in the world connecting to each other as human beings and less in the kind of political sphere that then we would be able to give each other permission to like actually live and so you know I think these doing projects like this as quick as they happen you know they're up and they're down and there's a lot to learn in between I mean I think they do remind me of that and still kind of give me personally hope in this and all of this that we're doing and in these kinds of very quick opportunities to meet and collaborate so yeah We have another question or comment Tom It's a wonderful idea but who supports you? It's not the Israeli government it's not the German government Is it a theater? Is it a human rights group? Oh no, the play was produced by the German theater Maxim Gorkytheater in Berlin but yeah Ellen is also director in residence so they produced it and there it's still running right? Yeah Well I thank you both First of all it really depends on the topic of the project in this specific project we really started learning so we were very privileged to have this opportunity to really take the whole group after getting to know a little bit of their personal stories and to go actually to places which are triggers for their stories and connected to their biography and do it as a group on a bus and we were one week together in Bosnia doing you know everyday meeting a lot of people in a lot of places and it would bring triggers it would bring a lot of dramas inside the group it would bring a lot of reaction of people they would have to write a journal we would do during those days a lot of conversation a lot of psychodrama a lot of improvisations and later when we come back we had really something like two two more weeks of talking and analyzing and having political bringing triggers and having political fights on it or personal fights on it or personal sharing and out of this in a way the play happens I can't really explain it's always a different method sometimes it's through improvisation sometimes it's through people participating in the writing sometimes it's just really about me projecting back about the process but we really take something like three weeks to not deal with trying to get a result but really to go through some kind of a group dynamic and mutual research so thank you so much yeah for coming Charlotte for the like consecutive meeting thank you so much for coming oh yeah and you all invited to join us for a little drink at the archive bar which is around the corner and I hope you will come back tomorrow for our first reading at 4pm