“Frequently playful, sometimes surprisingly jokey – and ultimately desperately moving” – The Guardian

This “astonishingly assured” (The Guardian) drama comes to New Zealand following sell-out seasons at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and London’s National Theatre.

Based on the experiences of children who lived through the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, Us/Them – the break-out hit show from Brussels youth theatre company BRONKS – portrays extreme events but through a child’s eyes. Despite the potentially harrowing subject matter, the experience is naively wonderful and unsettlingly funny. 

Two children sketch a map onto a wide bare stage. They are intent, urgent. It has to be accurate. Part of the staggering achievement of Us/Them is that its two performers are able to start with a simple physical act of abstract map-making and open up an entire world of the mind. Thrilling, often humorous and with a deft lightness of touch.

 Circa Theatre
Friday 16 Mar – Sunday 18 Mar 2018
+ 1.30pm Sat & Sun 
Recommended for ages 12+
GA (seated) $49.00
Pricing excludes service fee
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WRITER’S NOTE BY CARLY WIJS

In 2013, I was asked to create a performance for BRONKS, a Belgian theatre company for young audiences. The terrorist attack in a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, had just occurred; I had read about it in the newspapers and watched footage of it on television, but I had not discussed it with my then eight-year-old son.

But he had seen it for himself on the news and he came to tell me. The way he talked about the attack was very specific: objective, with the ability to overlook the emotional implications. He handled the news factually, as a sequence of events, and without connecting it to a judgement. It was as if the horror for him as an eight-year-old child had a completely different meaning because it was not possible to relate it to his own life. A child, unlike an adult, does not think: “That could have been me.”

I started to think about another horrifying act of unspeakable violence – the Beslan school siege of September 2004 – and how this dark episode in history could combine with the thoughts and impressions of children about such acts, to make a piece of theatre for young people. 

If you type “Beslan” into Google and look at the pictures, it is riveting. You cannot let go of the horror. The fact that it involves children makes that feeling even stronger. But how can we put such indescribable acts on stage? How can we make something that is totally incomprehensible, understandable? And isn’t it taboo to make a piece of theatre about terrorism, for audiences that include children?

Ultimately, no subject is taboo for children. It is just important that you use the right words. Discussing the topic of terrorism with children is a challenge, but it can be done.

Why Beslan? The siege took place at a school, and the first day of school is something to which every child can relate. The fact that the terrorists chose that specific day and location to stage their attack reflects a profound perversion – but I did not want to talk about that. That’s just an ongoing debate among adults: why is this happening? A child cannot and does not have to answer that question. That is the privilege of being a child.

Whilst doing research, I came across a BBC documentary called Children of Beslan, in which the story of the siege is told by some of the children who were held hostage. These children gave a factual account of those events, just as my son had done with the Nairobi attack. Aloof, almost. Which, of course, does not mean that these children do not have an enormous trauma to process. Unfortunately, the ramifications of what happened to them will probably hit them when they grow up. But the only thing that seemed to count for the children in the documentary was that the story was told as accurately as possible.

It was because of this documentary that I decided to tell the story entirely from the perspective of the children: one boy and one girl. There is a difference between their perspectives, but they both try to be precise in their accounts of what happened during the three-day siege.

Sometimes children flee from horror, straight into the comforting arms of imagination. In the documentary, a boy fantasised that Harry Potter would arrive wearing his invisibility cloak and kill the terrorists one by one. Others fantasised that they were part of a film and none of it was really happening to them.

Almost 1200 people, including 777 children, were held hostage during the siege. Outside the school there must have been several thousand people. And yet, in the news footage, Google searches and documentaries, you keep seeing the same group of about 50 photogenic people. In all of the footage that has survived, it’s the scenes of greatest desperation and devastation that play on a loop.

As adults, we apparently have a need for an overly dramatised perspective, which leads us into black and white thinking: “Us” versus “Them”. The refreshing thing about a child’s gaze is that it is not coloured by the need for dramatic interpretation, because that view of things does not connect to their own life. And if it does connect to their own life, it is tackled through imagination. This is what Us/Them is about. 

CREATIVE TEAM
Writer & Director   Carly Wijs
Created with   Thomas Vantuycom
Designer   Stef Stessel
Lighting Designer   Thomas Clause
Sound Designer   Peter Brughmans
Dramaturge   Mieke Versyp

CAST
Gytha Parmentier
Roman Van Houtven

Youth , Theatre ,

1 hr