This year alone, thousands of people have tried to travel illegally from North Africa to Southern Europe in overcrowded and unsuitable boats, risking their lives to escape poverty, hunger and war. More than 50,000 irregular border crossings were detected in the first months of 2023. 160% more than in 2022. The latest tragedy is the shipwreck off the coast of Greece on 14 June, where a boat carrying between 400 and 750 migrants sank. Of those, only 104 survivors have been recovered.
What are these people to us? Simple statistics. The reality of their existence is too far removed from ours to really touch us emotionally. But if we knew their stories, we would understand what drove them to flee their country, we would know what they went through on this arduous journey, and we would discover the dreams and hopes that hang like a thread. In the year in which Timisoara is the European Capital of Culture, in which there is more talk than ever about dialogue between cultures, BIS Teatru has chosen to tell a story full of sensitivity, in a performance-installation, entitled Mutat de la noi (text and direction Bogdan Sărătean), presented in the form of five performances, as part of the project Memory of water, our memory. And it’s amazing how much a theatre performance can change something in us! Sure, art won’t transform the world on a macro level, but it can bring more awareness, empathy, acceptance. And raise questions.
I went to see the show on 14 October. The title, Moved from Us, intrigued me from the start, being an archaic-sounding phrase that I knew conjured up thoughts of those who had gone “to a better world”. Such is the case with the main character, Senegalese Mbaye, who is boarding a boat carrying illegal migrants in the hope of reaching Europe to give his children a better life. What are they actually saying? To give them a life, because often what these people live in Africa, we Europeans used to comfort, we could not even „live“.
As a spectator, once you board the bus from the Cardinal Points station to the Water Museum, you have the opportunity to feel, albeit in a small way, the stress, physical suffering and fear of a man at the mercy of migrant smugglers, who is treated like a cow in a large herd, crammed into the hold of a boat and not even allowed to drink water, lest he have to urinate. The roles of the smugglers are played by three BIS actors, who do their jobs very well. They are dressed in black, authoritative, and always rush the audience towards the set route. Set designer Alexandra Budianu has taken care to cover the bus windows so that you feel like you’re in a tin can. I can see the surprise on the faces of the other passengers, some of them not exactly young, who I guess are used to classical theatre, where there is a clear demarcation between stage and auditorium. However, they don’t protest, they take in the experience, and are curious to know what will happen next.
Once at the Water Museum, the route of the show-installation follows the three key stations on the water treatment stream: the well group (where water extracted from underground entered the plant), the filtration station (where water from the boreholes became safe for consumption) and the pumping station (the point where the water’s journey to Timisoara’s taps began). You feel like you’re on a ship on your way to an unknown world. You step on your clothes, hear the waves crashing against the ship’s hold, you’re guided from one room to another. In a small, cramped space, through two TV monitors, you learn the story of migrants who came to Romania from Bulgaria after World War II. As a simple, rural woman, Dana Talos talks about magical practices that are strikingly similar to those common in Africa. Baba Fema from Comloșu Mare, who saves the woman’s brother by sacrificing her younger sister, has a counterpart in Baba Mukassa from Uganda, who also succeeds in emptying a child at the expense of another. Even though geographically far apart, archaic communities seem to be guided by the same archetypes.
In the last room, viewers are invited to sit on balconies on either side of the big screen, on which images from Africa and short interviews with locals who dream of going abroad are shown. The show builds like a jigsaw puzzle. Documentary footage is interwoven with the monologues of the actors who stand in front of us on the glass walkway. One of the actresses is Shama Lea herself, of Ugandan origin. Her testimony about the hunger of children in Africa and the difficulty of walking miles to reach a water source is moving. On the one hand she speaks of her own experience, as real as it gets, and on the other she plays Mbaye’s mother in the show.
In turn, the protagonist of the events is doubly constructed. His face, projected on the screen, is that of an authentic African, but it is actor Claudiu Fălămaș who gives him fat. The story is organised around the leitmotif of water, thus also exploiting the material heritage of the city of Timișoara through the space chosen for the performance. Water appears in several different guises: as the source of life, so sought after in Africa, the bad water that can make you sick with typhoid fever if it is not boiled, the water in Lake Retba or Pink Lake, where Mbaye and his uncle Moustapha extract salt to sell, and finally the cold water in which the overloaded boat that carries him to Europe sinks.
The Old Continent is seen as a place of salvation, a place from which once you arrive, you don’t go back, as Uncle Moustapha says: “It’s good there. You can have a job and earn in a month what you earn here in a year. If you work, you can go to the hospital for free and your children can go to school without paying anything. And nobody has guns on the street. You can eat three times a day. You can eat ice cream as many times as you want!”
I look at the girl next to me. She has tears in her eyes. The protagonist’s chaotic thoughts before he takes his last breath impress us all. Though in grief, Mbaye sends a warm thought to each of his loved ones: his son, his wife and his mother. Memories of childhood mingle with the feeling of cold and suffocation. Then the cold turns to immense heat, which floods his whole body. The image of his mother, with her soft, sad voice, comes to his mind and ends the show: „Where have you gone, my child? Didn’t you tell me you wanted to walk on water to get to the other side…“
I’m talking to Larisa, the girl next to me. She tells me: „I’m sensitive anyway, but when Mbaye started talking about her family, I got very emotional. I really liked the actor who played him. His voice was beautiful! It made me feel like I was there. And the real images of Africa make you get attached to everything that happens in the show, because you realise it’s not just acting…“.
After the show, the artistic team invites us to a debate on migration, moderated by the director Bogdan Sărătean, who also tells us about the odyssey of the show: Initially, in 2020 a film was made – a mix of documentary and fiction – and then, at the invitation of the Timisoara NGO, Prin Banat, it was transformed into a performance-installation that includes parts of the film. The show was performed in 2022 as part of the uprooting tour, in unconventional venues such as the Mine in Petrila or the Old Synagogue in Mediaș. This year, in Timisoara, the show is included in the project Memory of Water, Our Memory, funded by CECART Timis’ Over Border Culture + programme.
People want to know about the creation process and the lives of the people of Africa. The need for solidarity and tolerance emerges from the discussion. It is clear that many people have not really realised the tragedies of those who choose to flee from Africa or Asia to Europe. Simone’s words stick in my mind: „This kind of performance is necessary to make more people aware of what is happening close to us. We have so many prejudices towards those who migrate! Watching the performance, I was happy to be living in Romania, in this time of peace. We are privileged just because we were born here and not in Africa. It would be interesting to show it in schools too, so that young people understand how lucky they are, and be grateful for what they have.“
This journalistic material was made possible by a grant from Energie! Creative Fellowships, granted by the Municipality of Timișoara, through the Project Centre, within the Power Station component of the National Cultural Programme “Timișoara – European Capital of Culture in 2023”. The material does not necessarily represent the position of the Timisoara City Projects Centre and the Centre is not responsible for its content or how it may be used.
Photos: Alin Praf
