Vùng biên giới

By Helgard Haug / Daniel Wetzel

TO MATERIAL BOX

 

In the spring of 2008, Rimini Protokoll set out to investigate the neighbourhood of two Countries. At the German/Czech border they discovered that 'Vietnam lies between Prague and Dresden'. Here, behind armies of garden dwarves, wall-high stacks of pirate CDs and
sacks of counterfeit brand-name clothing, Vietnamese traders have found a livelihood. They came from the Asian socialist brother nation to work as contract workers and trainees in the CSSR and the GDR. Back then, the border posts, now deserted, were still hard to get past.
Now, those who stayed in Dresden and in Prague when the Berlin Wall fell belong to those cities’ largest migrant group. Almost nobody is stopped at the border now and global border traffic is increasing. While some send for their families from Vietnam and others try to enter the country illegally overland, the Czech state now pays willing returnees 500 Euros and their return flight, as a result of the financial crisis. On the German side of the border, hundreds are flown from Berlin-Schönefeld airport into absolute uncertainty in collective deportations.
At the Vietnamese wholesale market in Prague, children help unpack a fresh supply of fake US military uniforms from boxes onto the counter. But while the parents call out “cheap, cheap!” in broken Czech, their children have conquered entirely different territories: they study, travel, speak several languages and feed search engines with questions about the status of the place where they feel ‘at home’, where they belong.
In Vùng biên giới, first and second generation Vietnamese immigrants take the stage, opening up not just an insight into their lives in these countries but also the opportunity of sharing their view of ours.


With: Pham Thanh Van, Pham Anh Thu, Do Thu Trang, Cao The Hung, Phung Hang Thanh, Nguyen Van Loi, Nguyen Hung Son, Karl-Heinz Kathert

Created by: Helgard Haug und Daniel Wetzel
Dramaturge Sebastian Brünger
Set Design Simeon Meier
in colaboration with Marc Jungreithmeier
Research Karolína Svobodová, Sebastian Brünger
Sound Design Michael Weishaupt
Lighting Design Marc Jungreithmeier, Petra Pazek

Stage right schaefersphilippen Theater und Medien GbR

2 hours no intermission
A Zipp – German-Czech cultural projects production, in cooperation with the
Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Pražský divadelní festival německého jazyka
(Prague German Language Theatre Festival - Prager Theaterfestival deutscher Sprache) and Národní divadlo (Nationaltheater Prag – Prague National Theatre)