Date of Award
2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Social Sciences
First Advisor
Vesperi, Maria
Area of Concentration
Anthropology
Abstract
This is an ethnography of Club Al-Hakawati نادﺩيﻱ اﺍلحكواﺍتي , a political theater group for young refugees and asylum seekers based in Berlin, Germany. In June 2016, they wrote the play Caravan Al-Hakawati (The Caravan of Storytellers) to premier at a performance festival they co-organized. In the play, the Hakawati travel during the outbreak of a war through a world of borders they cross, telling stories based on Arab oral traditions and their own lived experiences. Club Al-Hakawati is a space where people can have their voices heard through their creative actions. Having a community where they can direct their own actions and choose how to share them on stage delivers a sense of control and empowerment against uncertain futures, strict controls against mobility, and the pressures to speak, act, and live like a German. These actors discussed how they use the arts as a tool for activism and a way of finding their place in a new city as Europe moves to the right of asylum policy.
Recommended Citation
Owen, Maia, "“NOBODY GIVES US A VOICE, WE TAKE IT!”: POLITICAL THEATRE ORGANIZED BY REFUGEES IN BERLIN, GERMANY" (2017). Theses & ETDs. 5400.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/5400