NYU Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights Blog

Thomas (Drew) Castaneda

Postmigrancy

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Drew Castaneda
Ballhaus Naunynstraße
Berlin, Germany

Please excuse the delayed post. Things are really picking up at the Ballhaus. Most of the theater staff was away on vacation for several weeks in July, which is why I was initially assigned to help out the few people who were still finishing things up in the Finance and Press departments. Now everyone is back and busy preparing for the Almancı! Festival: 50 Jahre Scheinehe (or, 50-year sham marriage), which, as I mentioned previously, will open on August 31st, the day before I fly back to New York.

In my last post I mentioned that I’d just begun working as an assistant to the director’s assistant (who is also my roommate, Murat) on a production called Pauschalreise: Die 1. Generation (or, loosely translated, ‘All-inclusive Vacation: The 1st Generation). The play is the last installment in a trilogy that presents semi-autobiographical stories of “first-, second-, and third-generation Turkish people” living in Germany. In keeping with the largely fantastical nature of the first two plays, the characters in Pauschalreise have set up a utopian nation-state (they’ve designed their own flag) above the clouds.

The play is loosely based on oral histories taken from the actors during a period of about two weeks. We’d meet everyday in a rehearsal room at the theater and the actors–Sema, Serpil, Nuri, Idil, Duygu, Kader, Çidem, and Gökhan–would converse at a roundtable for several hours at a time, often responding to questions posed by Lukas Langhoff (the director) and Hakan Sivaş Mican (the playwright). It was very interesting to have been able to observe this process, which was definitely effective in the sense that by the end of the conversation period, the actors seemed very at ease and familiar with each other, despite the large age gap. (Half of the cast is around my age, the other actors are in their sixties.)

The trilogy of generations began with Ferienlager: Die 3. Generation, which was brought to PS122 in New York last November along with Klassentreffen: Die 2. Generation. Three of the actors—Duygu, Kader, and Çidem—who played in Ferienlager are also playing in Pauschalreise as the granddaughters of the older actors who are representing those Turkish people who came to (West) Germany on temporary guest-worker contracts beginning in 1961 to help fuel the postwar boom economy.

I became aware of the transnational aspects of the theater quite early on. Once, while helping out in the Finance department, I was asked to address and send out mail to various institutions affiliated with the Ballhaus; most of the institutions had Istanbul addresses. The upcoming Almancı! Festival will actually be a follow-up to another festival, Beyond Belonging – Almancı!, which was co-hosted by Ballhaus Naunynstraße in Istanbul in 2009. Klaus Wowereit, the then and current (and openly-gay) mayor of Berlin flew in to support the so-called ‘postmigrant’ cultural production coming out of his city.

The Ballhaus Naunynstraße does in fact bill itself as Germany’s first ‘postmigrant theater.’ I came here to research what exactly is postmigrantisch about Ballhaus’ postmigrantisches Theater. Theater aside, I was interested in exploring the politics surrounding the term ‘postmigrant,’ which seems to have become an alternative self-identification within certain Turkish German communities. According to Kira Kosnick in her 2007 ethnography of Turkish-language broadcasting and multicultural politics in Berlin, young people increasingly resent being referred to as immigrants or migrants, even if qualified in terms of generation. “To label them as second- or third-generation migrants,” she writes, “describes them in reference to the first generation, and prioritizes “arrival” over the fact of their having been born and raised in Germany” (23). She claims that since the turn of the millenium, “young artists and intellectuals with a family background from Turkey” increasingly refer to themselves as “postmigrants,” a term that retains the connection to a prior migration event while at the same time emphasizing a distance.

I came here with the idea that the Ballhaus was primarily interested in cultivating local, i.e., Turkish German talent. It is quite apparent, instead, that the cultural work being done at Ballhaus is a collaboration of both German- and Turkish-born talent. Shermin Langhoff, the artistic director of the theater, is a very well connected (Turkish German) woman with many contacts in both Germany and Turkey. It is clear that the theater has been so successful as a result of extensive transnational (and diasporic) networking. Perhaps I’ll devote a separate blog entry to identifying the various ways the theater makes use of its transnational and diasporic ties.

This summer I have been interested in exploring the politics of representation surrounding the term ‘postmigrant’ and its aesthetization (and commercialization) in a theatrical environment in a specific national (even municipal) context. Who can authoritatively “speak for” whom, by what means, and who is watching? Specifically: What is ‘post-‘ about ‘postmigrancy?’ Who is a ‘postmigrant’? Who is authorized to claim a postmigrant positionality? Is the Ballhaus redefining or extending the definition of what it means to be a ‘postmigrant?’ Does ‘postmigrancy’ mean anything at all? (I had not considered the final question until someone–at the Ballhaus, actually–suggested that the word was never supposed to be taken so seriously.)

It has been very interesting to consider these questions in light of a theatrical trilogy that hinges on a periodization of migrant histories. My personal involvement with the trilogy reaches back to last fall, when I held a brief internship with a New York-based PR agent who was hired by the Ballhaus to publicize both Ferienlager and Klassentreffen before they were brought to PS 122 last November.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNE45kjRYUw&feature=related

Also,quick update on Perikızı: Shortly after I wrote my last blog post, I realized that it would be impossible to work simultaneously with Pauschalreise and Perikızı and that I’d have to choose to work exclusively with one or the other. I chose to continue working with Pauschalreise because I’d already gotten to know the cast and because I will not be able to see Perikızı, which will premiere on September 27.

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by

Drew Castañeda
Ballhaus Naunynstrasse
Berlin, Germany

I have been living in Berlin just one day short of six weeks. I am interning at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, an experimental theater company based in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The theater is housed in a former ballroom dating back to the nineteenth century. Since its extensive renovation in 2008 (the official “European Year of Intercultural Dialogue”), Ballhaus Naunynstrasse has established itself as an important center of migrant and ‘postmigrant’ cultural production.

The Ballhaus team has been remarkably eager to incorporate me into their working space and individual projects. I have already had the opportunity to help out in several departments within the theater; I spent my first two weeks in Production Management and have since completed various assignments in the Press and Finance departments. These departments operate under kulturSPRÜNGE e.V., an interdisciplinary network founded in 2003 that aims to support and make visible the artistic and cultural achievements of migrants and ‘postmigrants,’ as well as to foster exchange and dialogue between artists, political activists and academics around the topics of migration and urban culture.

At the moment, I am involved as a director’s assistant with “Pauschalreise: Die 1. Generation” and am set to begin working on a second production, “Perikızı,” next week. Both productions will premiere at the Almancı! Festival, a theater/ performance/ film/ music/ literature festival celebrating the 50th anniversary of the official bilateral agreement on labor recruitment between Turkey and Germany. Written by Hakan Savaş Mican and directed by Lukas Langhoff, “Pauschalreise: Die 1. Generation” will open the festival. It is the last in a trilogy that foregrounds the role of generation vis-à-vis migrancy. We are still in the initial phase of fleshing out the content of the play. In my next post, I will elaborate on the interesting process that the director and his team have opted to collect narratives and ideas for the play, which has yet to be written.

Perikızı is playwright Tunçay Kulaoğlu’s contemporary adaptation of an earlier play written by Turkish German playwright Emine Sevgi Özdamar. It will be directed by Michael Ronen, from Israel. I was originally set to work with this director on a play titled Keloglan in Alemania, which would have also been a contemporary version of an earlier Özdamar play performed alfresco, but for whatever reason, the theater decided to produce Perikızı, indoors. I will begin working with this production next week and will have more to tell about it in my next post.