Bloody Niggers!

A play by Dorcy Rugamba with Rana Farahani, Ibrahima Sanogo, Muwala-Paulo Lando, music: Dirk Achim Dhonau, director: Isabelle McEwen

Premiere on 10.11.2016 at Hamburger Sprechwerk

"The text is about all people who at some point were considered inferior and treated as such." (Dorcy Rugamba)

"Bloody Niggers!" finds its entrance with a film recording of American President George W. Bush. Standing with a megaphone on the ruins of the World Trade Center, he announces that those responsible for this attack would soon hear America's cries of pain very clearly. Then a woman steps on stage. Nothing to follow now will be charming. There is talk of the crusades of the Catholic Church, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the killing of the Indians. The genocide of the Herero and Nama in Namibia and the human rights violations of the French in Algeria.
[...]
The means used on stage are minimal. A chess board, on which a constantly repeating game black against white takes place, a bloody pile of rags. In addition a thundering accompaniment with various percussions and a variety of instruments by the musician Dirk Achim Dhonau, which again and again picks up the rhythms of indigenous peoples and consciously pulls them to the nerves of the audience. At the centre, however, is the monologue in which event follows event.
[...]
The play, which was written in 2007 by the Rwandan author and theatre maker Dorcy Rugamba, has no plot, no roles and no stage directions in its raw form. The realization by the director Isabelle McEwen is great and the acting performance of the actors is consistently terrific. They succeed in awakening the urge to explore the unpleasant facts of our past and present in those who are not left calm by the numbers and data from the play. In order for history not to repeat itself, we as an audience must venture out of the role of the audience and into a fundamental reflection of our own self-image and our community of values.

"Bloody Niggers! And have we learned anything new?", SB, www.schattenblick.de

Further projects