Theater Practice for Intercultural Cohesion: The Present State of the “They-Play” Stage

Contemporary German theater on the theme of immigrants and refugees

My research field is theater studies, but even when we refer to theater studies in a single phrase, there are various approaches. Broadly speaking, there are two directions. One is a literary study that analyzes the text of theater, that is, the script. The other is research that focuses on how the text is expressed on stage, in other words, the staging.

The former is mainly the work of the playwright, while the latter is the work of the stage director. I specialize in the latter type of research and am interested in what and how it is played out on stage, from the German theater of the first half of the 20th century led by Brecht, which was the starting point of my research, to contemporary theater at home and abroad.

Now, when many people hear the word “theater,” they probably think of fiction depicting an out-of-the-ordinary world. Indeed, there are many plays with rich scenes of song and dance that take us away from everyday reality.

On the other hand, there are also plays that encourage us to rediscover or reconfirm reality. For example, in response to globalization, the number of people of other nationalities is increasing in both Japan and Germany. The theater practices that aim for intercultural cohesion with this current situation in mind have become a movement in the contemporary theater world.

One example is theater that focuses on the themes of immigrants, refugees, and their second- and third-generation descendants. As seen in present-day Ukraine and Palestine, wars create many refugees, and people are forced to evacuate and migrate to neighboring countries.

In particular, post-World War II Germany has been closely involved in accepting immigrants. During the period of East-West division, West Germany achieved post-war reconstruction by accepting labor from foreign countries such as Turkey and Greece. Some of the foreign workers known as Gastarbeiter (guest workers) settled in Germany with their families, and today, their third generation has become an active part of society. In recent years, we have also seen many people with immigrant roots working as TV commentators and national soccer team players.

In Germany, prior to the Ukraine war, the influx of refugees due to the Syrian Civil War in 2015 became a major social issue. At that time, Chancellor Merkel actively promoted the acceptance of Syrian refugees, but this policy caused domestic friction and also triggered the rise of far-right political parties advocating the expulsion of refugees. This trend is particularly noticeable in the former East Germany.

Amid such social division, the German theater world is now actively engaging in theater practices where immigrants and refugees living in Germany serve as key subjects.

For example, one approach involves professional actors who are second- or third-generation immigrants interviewing their grandparents and conveying their stories through theater. Furthermore, there is a growing form of theater where immigrants themselves who are not professional actors, or those with immigrant roots, take the stage and directly share their own past and family histories.

Quite a few Germans who are in the majority do not usually have contact with immigrants. Theater that allows us to learn about their daily lives and challenges through the stage provides an opportunity to, as it were, reacknowledge them as “new neighbors.”

Practice of documentary theater without professional actors

The theater performed by the people involved, or those close to them, so to speak, can be referred to not as the “play-them” theater, but as the “they-play” theater. This practice is not theater as a work consumed as entertainment, but theater as a means aimed at transforming the real world.

In fact, theater practices that do not use professional actors have existed for a long time, and in Japan and Germany before World War II, for example, people aiming for a workers’ revolution practiced it. It is the workers’ theater, where the workers themselves take on the role of performers and directly express the lives and issues of the working class in front of the audience.

Workers’ theater was not only performed in existing theaters, but often in the places where they lived. The content and roles performed were often based on the performers themselves, making it a practice that thoroughly pursued reality. In addition, since many of the audience members were also workers, the theater became a place where the issues faced by each individual worker were shared, creating a wave of empathy and solidarity.

I believe that the contemporary “they-play” theater on the theme of immigrants and refugees is also part of this lineage of workers’ theater. There are many theater-related media in Germany, and discussions on immigrants and refugees are frequently covered. It is not uncommon for works on these themes, including those featuring professional actors, to win awards.

One example of a work that gained attention in recent years is that of the playwright Yael Ronen. Ronen, who is originally from Israel, features Jewish-German characters in one of her works, depicting how they interact and conflict with Arab and Turkish Germans, as well as the intergenerational friction that arises. What’s particularly interesting is that these works actually feature Jewish-, Arab-, and Turkish-German actors in actual performances.

As a result, the fictional elements of the work overlap with the performers’ real-life backgrounds, and the actors also take on and portray their own severe origins, creating a highly realistic work. In some cases, the language of such theater can be multilingual. Conversations take place in multiple languages, and subtitles are also provided in several languages.

This kind of theater practice, which encourages the rediscovery and reacknowledgement of everyday reality, is often referred to as documentary theater.

In recent years, the director collective Rimini Protokoll has been recognized as a standard-bearer of documentary theater. They often put people who have no previous experience on stage to perform, in line with the theme of the work they are creating. They are not professional actors. However, they are cast as experts of everyday life, each with their own unique profession.

The play features people such as management consultants, truck drivers, and residents of special care facilities, all of whom live in reality with those very titles. As a matter of fact, I was also recruited by chance during Rimini Protokoll’s performance in Japan, and I appeared as an interpreter, which is one of my jobs. There, the performers’ own experiences were shared on stage, and it felt as though we were watching a documentary film unfolding live.

Theater is an activity rooted in everyday life that encourages the rediscovery of reality

Even in Japan, movements such as those seen in Germany can be observed in several theaters. The Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre in Ikebukuro and the Setagaya Public Theatre in Sangenjaya are representative examples of this.

At the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, experts well-versed in themes such as immigrants and minorities act as brains and host lectures and workshops, inviting practitioners from Germany. Around ten Japanese actors and directors who are interested in such themes are sometimes invited to share information with German practitioners and create short plays.

In addition, Setagaya Public Theatre is engaged in particularly advanced activities in terms of the “they-play” theater. In the workshop of the project titled “Stories of the Community,” professional theater people participate as facilitators. Each year, themes such as “life and sex” and “end-of-life care” are set up, and general participants— people living in the community—discuss and shape the content of the performance.

In this workshop, a presentation is held at the end. The daily concerns of the local people and aspects of their lives that they do not usually have the opportunity to discuss are shared and communicated in an open form through the stage.

In the 2024 production of “Stories of the Community,” there was a work featuring a person who had suffered higher brain dysfunction due to a traffic accident and now lives using an electric wheelchair. That person delivered his lines using a smartphone. The script was based on his life story, which was gathered through interviews conducted by the workshop participants (who were the performers) and the facilitator. The interview process itself was also reenacted on stage. It can truly be called the “they-play” theater performed by the people involved.

In my view, theater is not something special that is detached from everyday life. Reality itself is the stage, and each person plays a role in their life. Therefore, theater is an activity rooted in everyday life.

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, there is a line that goes, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” (Act 2, Scene 7). For example, what comes to my mind is the scene of a lecture in a university classroom. I am standing at the lectern, with a large number of students in front of me. This may appear as a setting where I am the actor and the students are the audience. However, if we reverse it, it can be seen as the students taking the stage of the classroom and performing.

In society, everyone is in a relationship of seeing and being seen. To think about theater is to become aware of our own “performance” on the stage of the real world, isn’t it?

I often tell my students that I want them to be principled performers, in other words, good actors in everyday life. This is something I want them to be aware of, not just in the university setting, but in all places. I would like to send out many “good actors” to make the stage of society much better.

* The information contained herein is current as of September 2024.
* The contents of articles on Meiji.net are based on the personal ideas and opinions of the author and do not indicate the official opinion of Meiji University.
* I work to achieve SDGs related to the educational and research themes that I am currently engaged in.

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