A Theatrical Journey Celebrating the Refugee Experience | Amir Nizar Zuabi | TED

38,143 views ・ 2021-09-22

TED


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I'm Amir Nizar Zuabi.
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I was born in East Jerusalem,
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in a tough part of town
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between Beit Hanina neighborhood and the Shu'fat refugee camp.
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I'm a mixed child,
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that means my mother is Jewish and my father is Palestinian.
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So the refugee experience runs very deep in the DNA of the family.
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When my Jewish grandparents were fleeing Europe because of World War II,
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they came to Palestine
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and drove the other part of my family into exile.
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When I was 14,
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I stumbled by accident into a theater show
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in this rough part of town,
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and I fell in love.
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I fell in love with a reality that was being created in front of me,
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a reality that was full of possibilities,
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that was wilder, that was free,
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a reality that was an opposite contrast of the harsh reality we were living in.
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And I became a theater practitioner.
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Becoming a theater practitioner in Palestine
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is like conjuring water in the desert.
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We don't have the infrastructure,
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we don't have the big artistic institutions.
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What we do have is a need
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and something to say about the world we live in.
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Taking my shows to communities and refugee camps in Palestine,
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I was always struck by the immediacy of the encounter
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and that became a very powerful experience for me.
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In 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis,
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when hundreds of thousands of people were walking across Europe,
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with all the pain and the anguish that we saw,
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I started thinking that maybe we need to create a new model of theater.
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Maybe we need to take our theater out of the theaters and into the streets,
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the streets where these people were walking.
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And I started working with Good Chance theater company,
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a company that creates theater about the refugee experience.
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Together, we created "The Walk."
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"The Walk" is a rolling arts festival that will cross 8,000 kilometers,
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65 cities, towns and villages in its way,
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and we will create 120 events of welcome.
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"The Walk" is led by a nine-year-old Syrian girl,
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an unaccompanied minor called Amal.
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And Amal in Arabic means hope.
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(Music)
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Amal is a 3.5-meter puppet created by Handspring Puppet Company,
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the renowned puppet company from South Africa.
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"The Walk" will start in the border of Syria-Turkey,
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in a city called Gaziantep.
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We will make our way through Turkey and into Greece,
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then from Greece to Italy,
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from Italy to southern France,
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then through Switzerland to Germany, Belgium,
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and back to northern France,
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across the English Channel
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and then from Dover all the way up to Manchester.
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In order for Amal to make her journey,
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Amal has three sets of puppeteers to walk her,
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and each team is trained to give her gesture and nuance,
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which is what brings Amal to life.
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Together, there's 12 people in the company,
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12 people that come from diverse backgrounds.
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Together, they will walk Amal all the way from Gaziantep to Manchester,
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giving her life.
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"The Walk" is a very ambitious project.
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It's a huge logistical feat
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with all the territory that we need to cover.
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And it wouldn't be possible
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without the network of partnerships that we have.
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We are working with 250 partners along the route
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and thousands of participants.
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We're working with a very diverse group of partnerships
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with humanitarian groups, with civic society,
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with the mayors of the cities that we're going to visit,
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with faith leaders,
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with grassroots refugee organizations,
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and with the leading institutions and refugee artists in Turkey and Europe.
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And to all of them, we asked one simple question.
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We said, Amal is a nine-year-old girl that will pass through your city.
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She's alone, she's afraid, she's vulnerable.
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How would you like to welcome her?
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What would you learn from her and what will you teach her?
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And this small proposition harvested an unbelievable amount of generosity
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and creativity from our partners.
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Now, after two years of planning, "The Walk" has started.
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"The Walk" is a huge play set on an 8,000-kilometer stage.
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The events that will meet Amal on her way are events created by our partners,
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and they are big city-scale installations,
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participatory performances in the cities,
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precise meetings with communities
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or with an artistic work across the journey.
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We hope that these events will become the rich tapestry of Amal's experiences
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on her epic odyssey.
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It's important to say that "The Walk" is not a walk of misery.
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This is a walk of pride.
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We want to challenge the perception about the refugees.
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We want to talk about them not as an issue, not as a problem,
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but to talk about the potential they bring,
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about the cultural riches they come from
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and to honor their experience.
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We want to turn this into a celebration of shared humanity and hope.
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We hope that "The Walk" will leave in its wake,
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all the way from the edge of Turkey to Manchester,
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a network of thousands of people of good will,
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a wide corridor of friendship,
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and a new way of thinking about what it means to be a refugee
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in today's world.
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Everybody can follow Amal along her journey
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through the continuous updates on our website and on our social media.
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And I invite every one of you to welcome Amal in your own way.
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(Music)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Chris Anderson: How special is that.
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I'm hoping we have a live connection now to Nizar.
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Wow.
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(Cheering and applause)
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Nizar, I hope you can see
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already the extraordinary reaction to this project you've done.
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Can you tell us how is "The Walk" going?
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ANZ: Well, I'm a babysitter of a very demanding nine-year-old,
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and she's very big and demanding,
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but it's really exciting and the responses have been unbelievable.
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CA: In your talk, you talk about the soft power of the arts
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to change minds.
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Are you seeing evidence of that right now that this is working?
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ANZ: I hope so.
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We are meeting communities and children and adults and they meet her.
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And I hope she inspires the refugee children that she meets to think big.
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I hope she inspires the adults to feel compassion.
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She is very exciting to everybody who meets her, that's for sure.
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What will last after we pass through these cities, I hope,
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is a curiosity towards the other,
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towards somebody that you don't know and you want to know more about.
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CA: So how is she doing?
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May we possibly meet her?
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ANZ: With the amount of noise outside, I think she is here.
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(Cheering)
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She's coming our way.
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CA: So there are people walking with her every step of the way,
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including people who have had their own refugee experience, correct?
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ANZ: Yeah, we're meeting a lot of refugee community
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that are involved in planning the activities,
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and they also walk with us when we need them.
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So that's very exciting.
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CA: Wow.
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(Laughs)
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Nizar, tell us more about this extraordinary artistic vision,
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this creation, this little girl.
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ANZ: She is very, very warmly received everywhere.
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And the events try to capture the hardship of her experiences.
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Some of the events are very sad in a way,
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but very honest to the refugee experience.
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And some events are like today, a bit more jubilant and joyful,
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and involve the community gathering around her and welcoming her.
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So it's a mixture of the hardship,
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but also the welcome
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and the warm reception some communities give to refugees.
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CA: Well, it's been an extraordinary privilege for us
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to eavesdrop on "The Walk" there.
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This is an amazing project.
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It's a deeply inspiring project.
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And it must be extraordinary for you to see years of vision for this
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come into reality.
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So thank you for it.
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We thank you so much for this.
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Thank you.
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ANZ: Thank you so much. Thank you.
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(Applause)
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