AfricaBar is a play in which refugee and Italian actors bring their expectations and stories to the stage in order to tell the tale of forced migration in a different way. The performance goes on stage in Rome from June 22 to 24.
More than 30 Italian actors and refugees will take the stage at the Teatro Argentina theatre in Rome on June 23, and 24 to celebrate World Refugee Day in a play called AfricaBar, which aims to shed light on the increasingly timely topic of forced migration. In the play, a large bar, a large room, or a prison all stand for a place of passage where there are those who get an aperitif while others wait to board a boat to Europe.
Theatre for mutual respect
The show is the result of a multicultural artistic workshop titled "Theatre on the Run", which took place in recent months with migrants and Italians from the Programma Integra cooperative and ArteStudio. ArteStudio is a theatre company that performs shows and conducts workshops at migrant reception centres in Italy as well as in war zones and refugee camps in countries like Syria and Lebanon.
Among those taking part in the play is Yeli Kamara, a 29-year-old from Mali. He came to Italy two years ago, disembarking at the southern Italian port of Taranto, after having crossed the Mediterranean on a boat to escape war. "I really liked the workshop because when I came to Italy I didn't have any friends, I was always at the reception centre, I didn't speak Italian. This project changed my life," Kamara told ANSA.
We're a team, we work together and above all we respect each other. With this show we are telling the audience what happens in Africa,
Yeli Kamara said.
Imaginary stories for stirring up emotions
"AfricaBar is a grotesque title," said the play's director, Riccardo Vannuccini. It's a place that divides real life, made up of many difficulties, from the imagined life of the future, which is accessible by crossing the sea in a rubber dinghy. "Ours isn't social or civil theatre, there isn't luggage or a dinghy in the scenes. The people tell their imaginary stories.The media tell of the drama of the boats; we want to make the invisible visible, how these people imagine their future life and how we can begin to relate to them," he said.
A sequence of scenarios, in different languages, is there to "stir up emotions." "We want to avoid categories: a refugee isn't a race, it's a dramatic moment but a temporary one," Vannuccini said. He said working together over the past months was "simple, because we aren't doing academic work, but something that resembles more closely sport. We're a team that gives it our all and has fun, starting with body language," he said. He said theatre is a vehicle that can "understand the migratory phenomenon before other art forms or bureaucracy, because before being entertainment, it has always been a tool for understanding the great, momentous passages of human existence," he said.