The People of Yemen
Somewhere in the east of Djibouti, just outside a tiny village called Obock, the UNHCR settled a refugee camp for thousands of migrants arriving by boat from Yemen, just on the other side of the Gulf of Aden, where the Red Sea opens up. Over 4,000 people have arrived in this camp since it opened in April 2015, they live in tents, it has two schools, running water and electricity. But not a theatre. Until last week.
It was very early on a Saturday morning when we got on several vehicles to drive across the country from Djibouti City to Obock. We passed several nomadic settlements, and the scenery was manly dominated by sandy mountains, ocean and goats. Many, many goats.
We reached the camp by midday and were welcomed by the staff members, a small and wonderful team who quickly showed us to our allocated performance area and helped us start with the build. We would use one of the partners tents as a backdrop for our set, and this would also act as dressing room for the company together with our minibus, parked just behind it. We set some UNHCR plastic covers on the floor of the tent and whilst the cast got ready and run over their lines (some amends had to be made in this occasion as we were two actors down due to illness, so the wonderful John Dougall was to perform Polonius AND Claudius at the same time!); the stage managers started building the set and getting costumes in place quickly with the help of, now, many of the people who started gathering around us.
Kids came in dozens, and played with us whilst observing with wide eyes how we kept bringing things out of trunks and preparing to do our show. They naturally gathered in a semi-circle around us, and waited patiently for us to be ready. The sun was high up still, but the clock was against us, as we had no extra lights, so we relied solely on daylight.
It was 3pm when our full company stood in front of over 300 Yemeni refugees and started introducing themselves, one by one they stepped to the front, and after very appreciated Salam Alaikum, they would say the name of the character they were to play. Excitement rose when some of our cast kept naming different roles! Some of them can play up to 8 parts per show! And today, for the first time ever, John doubling up Polonius and Claudius caused a lot of excitement in the company as well.
Before the show and during the interval, Amira who was our contact in UNHCR told the audience in Arabic a brief synopsis of each part of the show, and we also circulated synopsis of the scenes in both Arabic and English. A lot of the audience members had read or studied the play in University, and as they told me, used to go to the theatre back in Yemen, mainly in Aden.
Men, women and children of all ages gathered together and enjoyed the performance, sitting on the floor, standing, sitting on plastic chairs. At one point I sat down during the show with all the kids and chatted to three young ladies who had studied in London and who were huge Shakespeare fans; they told the little ones the story and helped them understand the plot. People clapped on every hug; they laughed during the Hamlet mad scene, and felt very sorry for Ophelia when she sang her songs. But what they really enjoyed was the duel between Hamlet and Laertes. And the music of course!
I met Adib, who used to work as an oil engineer in Aden and was now the headmaster of the secondary school. Adib was following the story with the synopsis we handed and was going to work on the story the following day at school. He said to me “how come you came here? Why did you come? We are so far away.” I told Adib that since it was not possible for us to travel to Yemen due to the political circumstances, we looked for the place where the Yemenis would be. After all, countries are made of people, and since they were all there, they were Yemen. “Yes” said Adib with a big smile. “We are Yemen. We are the people from Yemen. We thank you for this.”
A little girl called Nada held my hand the entire day, and walked around with me during the show whilst I talked to people. She loved spying backstage and seeing what the stage managers were up to, so we let her play one of our instruments backstage in the last scene. Nada was ecstatic! Once we finished and with help from another woman who translated, she asked me if we were coming back the next day.
We finished our show to a big round of applauses and everyone came straight in to say hi to the actors and to ask for photos. During the get out, even more of the audience helped us, and thus we packed in record time, just when the sun was setting down. When we were packing all the kids commented on their favourite moments and I asked them why they thought Hamlet was upset, what was the matter with him…
“Oh he was just playing-look he’s happy now” someone said pointing at Naeem who played Hamlet that day-and he was indeed-we all were. Happy and dusty surrounded by the amazing people from Yemen.
A lot of this makes me reflect on the show itself: after the players come on stage, Hamlet has a monologue in which he questions his ability to feel, in comparison to the Player who can cry on stage representing stories that were not his own. The people we met in Obock fled from civil war, lost their homes and most of their families and they live in very extreme circumstances, and you would wonder how they could ever appreciate the fact that we bring a show to them, a story that comes from so far away….
I got the answer whilst watching them throughout the performance. Their faces lit and their mood changed, they smiled, they sang and danced with us, they enjoyed themselves and had fun. They travelled to a different place, far far away, in the cold grounds of Denmark, and, at least for a little while, they were just like anyone else, like the thousands of people who watched our show across the 160 countries that we have visited in the past 21 months. They were just people watching a show, not refugees, not displaced, not victims. Just people. The people of Yemen.
- by Malú Ansaldo, International Tour Associate
Photos by Monty Hicks
