Refugee Voices: A Dramatization

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If everybody calls me a refugee / why do you say that to me? / Some people say / it is my true nickname / but don't call me / that way. // I am a child of flesh and blood too / so don't take me / as a torn bag, not you. // I had myself a ball, a doll / blocks I made towers of / but now it is ashes and smoke all. // I am not an orphan, I am not / lost and found on a street, / I am, like you / by a mother born. // I have eyes, nose, mouth, ears / I have good and bad sides in my soul / have you too that all? // I know how to laugh too / and I know how to cry as well / so don't think if you call me / a refugee that I differ from you. / Look at me well / and you will see yourself.
-- Majana Burazovic, 12 years old, Bosnia-Herzegovina from The Suitcase

The Tufts drama group (Pen, Paint & Pretzels) chose to represent the upheaval of fleeing one's home in a series of vignettes, each involving a separate set of characters. They ranged from a tale of a mother, separated and then reunited with her family, to that of an American journalist in Bosnia, seeking a story that would engage the interest of apathetic U.S. viewers.

EPIIC, the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Tufts University, and the Departments of Music and Drama and Dance adapted the atelier model (French for an artist's studio) to bring together students, faculty, and visiting artists to explore the collaborative process in the arts through seminars and performances. Examining the linkages between theater and politics and looking at theater as a vehicle for social change afforded students and the public the opportunity to experience the power of theater in expressing political experiences, political ideas, and social action.

The project's thematic focus was to resonate and honor refugees voices through the dramatization of their stories. It dramatized women's and children's voices of The Suitcase: Refugee Voices From Bosnia and Croatia , as well as other refugee/immigrant experiences gathered from other sources such as UNHCR publications.

The student drama group Pen, Paint & Pretzels put together a stark and powerful performance with the assistance of Erika Munk, Professor of Drama at Yale University and Judith Williams of Tufts' Drama Department. Ms. Munk travelled to Tufts three times to work with the students, as well as to give a public lecture on "War, Refugees, and Theater". She said, "The performance itself, using all the means the seminars have found, makes refugee voices newly clear to an audience composed of many communities -- including refugees now living in the Boston area, people whose new neighbors are these refugees, everyone who interacts with them and needs the sensitivity and historical knowledge to do so wisely and humanely."

The program opened with the poetry of Nthabiseng Mabuza, a South African student at Brandeis University who is seeking political asylum in the United States. Mr. Krzysztof Wodiczko, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, Head of the Interrogative Design Group, and the Creator of Xenology: Immigrant Instruments, then spoke on the work that he has done to give refugees and immigrants their voices in their new countries.

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Krzysztof Wodiczko is a specialist in creating art that demonstrates the alienation that foreigners experience when exposed to a new culture, and attempting to demonstrate ways in which people of different cultures can connect and communicate. Below is one of his creations, a device which interferes with what users hear, as well as altering their voices and the visible movements of their mouths.

Ms. Mabuza reads some of her poetry.

Ms. Munk, who is also the Editor of Theater Magazine, and Julie Mertus, Professor of Law at Emory University and the Co-Editor of The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia, followed Mr. Wodiczko by providing a context for the performance pieces.