Waiting is the hell – in Damascus or in Zurich

Ivna Zic came in 1986 in Zagreb to the world, Lubna Abou Kheir, 1992 in Damascus. Now the two sit in the Theater Neumarkt in Zürich, side by side, and tell the story of how it came to be that you develop together a production: the Neuzürcher theater woman with long, smooth hair, the fishnet tights under plaid winter shorts, the kept, with a friendly Smile, strictly against the label "poor refugee woman", despite all the hardships she has been through. And the Altzürcher theater woman with the short, dark Curls, the black No-Nonsense Outfit and the precise records that lives in the river town grew up, in the meantime, however, partly in Vienna.

the idea for The community project comes from the new Neumarkt-Directors: Julia Reichert has been working together for years, with Ivna Zic, who has worked in Giessen, Hamburg and Graz, Theater, directing and Playwriting studied and, in many places, as a playwright and Director; and Tine spleen had met Lubna Abou Kheir a-in-residence programme at the theatre spectacle. At once the coupling for all seemed to be on Hand.

Arabic think English

write The collaboration is already a success story: "For me, the last 12 months have been something very Special," says Zic. She is now immersed in her role as a Director and had to pull himself for the conversation from the final samples of the stress of the "Broken light"; a world premiere is on Friday. "We have a lot of geskypt, I was able to the resulting Text to read, and we also talked about what is us at the Theater in General is important. This participation was great." And, therefore, possible, because the Syrian playwright thinks in Arabic, however, English writes.

Ivna Zic tells how the two young women talked together, to the playful piece went. Video: Tamedia

Both authors, the juggling with words of the foreign and your own know; the game with a language you Surprises; the friction of different cultures in everyday life.

"The Croatian is, of course, on the lips, the Oral part of the language is a big home – while it is Written much stranger. Correctly I write, I have learned it is never, I taught me to be more myself," explains Zic about their relationship to the parent language. Only this summer left the parents left Switzerland again.

In the debut novel "The Future" – he is on the Shortlist for the Swiss book price 2019 – send your protagonist on a train journey to Croatia, which is to travel in your past and in the emigration stories of their ancestors. The young woman remembers their "language balance" as a child, was a "howling Salto".

"I was lucky: a visa and a place on the plane."Lubna Abou Kheir

Lubna Abou Kheir, describes again, as she scrambled for her new piece with the subtitle, "A bow from Damascus to Zurich," by German dictionaries and grammars, in order to bring on the end of an unruly German on paper, this sounds like Syrian colloquial language.

The sounds for example, like this: "You know very well how a man in Syria in the army: no one asks me for my opinion, whether I want to go or not. You take me as an old thing/ a dirty potato, which must be thrown", typed in the figure Waddah, sitting in the ostsyrischen city of Deir ez-Zor firmly into the phone.

And the protagonist Maya in your new Zurich home apology answers:"! Sorry! I'm starting to forget, I must, because I can live like any other normal person here. I should live a normal life. I'm 21 years old. Forget to begin now, better than later."

An ear for the background noise

Originally Kheir, the acquired in Damascus a Bachelor's degree in theatre science had, before you came in 2016 for the first time, for a Writing workshop in Switzerland, the new Text, present in Syria - and to escape the topic of want to break away from the duration. Inspired by Thornton Wilder's Dreiakter "Our Town" stand you in the mood for a town piece, which captures the sound of the existential fundamental between people.

But during the writing process – "at Neumarkt no one left me complete freedom!", says the playwright, which is sometimes even on the stage – she realized: That's not so easy. The issues are intertwined.

no, you do not need to be at the Theater necessarily politically, underlines Kheir, but also the theatre of glitter is not a Must. It count the viewers in, affect, thought, toast. And the exile, the author cannot and will not do so, as they are no longer affected by the conditions.

Lubna Abou Kheir speaks about the political claim of the theater – and her new piece. Video: Tamedia

What happens to the relationship when you have to build up in exile, something New? What if you and the remaining members of the family occur in the hell of waiting on the spot?

"It is then as if in a vacuum trapped," says Lubna Abou Kheir. For you it was in Syria after returning from Switzerland three years ago, difficult: your diploma has been locked, you interrogated her, threatened her. In 2013, they had stayed in Damascus for several days without water, electricity and food; but now it was time to go. "I was lucky: a visa and a place on the plane." But after the arrival in Switzerland, the big one started for you to Wait.

to work against the propaganda machines

a year and A half without papers, without the right to the experience at all, to be dependent on social assistance, all ask and need to re-learn. This was not easy. For the mother and the four siblings, it is a visa, no visit. On the other hand, you have got to know in the difficult Phase is also a lot of helpful people.

to dominate in the multi-ethnic state of Syria, the nationalism and the fear of the Other the discourse that is open to the world Damaszenerin "a huge Problem". Trump withdrew his troops; and the Kurds were crushed, while the Turkey, like the PKK, have also left their propaganda machinery running at full speed. Also in the Syrian population, the signs would not be on reconciliation.

The piece of "Broken light" is broken and biographies, and the difficult attempt to create Strange new Compounds and not to lose old. Very different voices – from Switzerland, from Syria – a platform: Lubna Abou Kheir has written against the omnipresent border obsession, the sprawling fantasies of the walls, the ethnically pure zones.

A mutable map of the world is the point in the piece to the Symbol that our borders were artificially drawn and, in truth, agile – shrinkable to zero.

"most people carry several stories, places, languages in themselves."Ivna Zic

"the language undermines, just by your creative alienation, Stereotypes, and is accessible", seconded by Zic, which has a fine ear for the resistive Whisper the words. And you feel: Here, anyway, between the two theatres form the Differences do not impact trees make on the inside, on the contrary. The chemistry is right.

identity is not a fixed Size, gushes out Zic in Swiss German. The Josef Winkler-Enthusiastic and Peter Waterhouse-Aficionada – austriak and voice artists that have as much to do with the Austria-love the choice of Vienna as the historical and geographical proximity of the country to the Slavic room – stated: "most of the people are wearing several stories, places, and languages, and I think it would be exciting to give it a matter of course."

to beat, Also in their own next piece, "The guest is a stranger", premiered in April 2020 in St. Gallen, observed Ivna Zic, how to do this, all of these stories in awake – just bows. "I'd be Writing, I would have not spoken today, but still no man: for Two years I could write," she says, and disappears back into the sample.

world premiere on 1. November in the Theater Neumarkt

Created: 30.10.2019, 15:56 PM