Evros Walk Water – A Cage-Re-Enactment

Daniel Wetzel / Rimini Protokoll

So many faces, so many images, so many headlines, so much fuss. In the middle of the enduring “refugee crisis” there is hardly anything that can be said or shown which won’t either be drowned in uproar or preach to the converted. However, ‘Evros Walk Water’ stays quite calm, almost private, amid all this noise.
The leading characters in this piece, fifteen boys – kids, teenagers – have crossed the Evros, the river which separates Greece and Turkey and serves as one of the demarcation lines of fortress Europe. Since the section of the Evros which can be crossed was closed in 2012, refugees can only get across using the far more expensive and dangerous route by boat.
Now the teenagers are stranded in a small hostel in the center of Athens. They have survived treks from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, being transplanted to Greece and the torture-like conditions in Greek internment camps. Now they go to school in Athens and try to think about first girlfriends and computer games instead of absent parents and lost friends. They don’t talk to each other about their traumatic experiences.
The vehicle which helps them tell their story is John Cage’s ‘Water Walk’: the household objects which Cage legendarily used as instruments in the 1960s are replaced by ones which the boys can use to describe their reasons for escape, their path to Europe and their everyday lives in Athens. They perform the three minute concert six times – or, to be more precise: they let us perform it. Because they are not allowed to travel, we the audience have to take their parts while we are listening to their stories. “We would like to act it out for you, but we’re not allowed to, so you’ve got to do it yourselves.”
In Daniel Wetzel’s staged concert we become representatives of the absent “everyday experts”, who are the trademark of Rimini Protokoll. As intimate insiders, far from overwhelmed, but with Cage-like humor and playfulness, we take part in a celebration of the noises and the courage of these children whom we cannot see. A collaboration between audiences and performers across political borders and the boundaries of space and time.

Talk An den Grenzen des Darstellbaren on 22 June, 20 h

ON

Duration 70’

Tickets can be purchased here

School performances upon request

Back