Leaving / Coming / Staying: A series about refugees based on real testimonies

Casa Árabe is collaborating with La Abadía theater on the special schedule of events designed to mark the occasion of World Refugee Day, to be taking place on June 20.

The series “Leaving / Coming / Staying” is a program about the lives of emigrants, exiles and refugees, portrayed from different vantage points. They are rough stories packed with emotion based on real testimony, from either the present or near past. Denunciations and outcries through the voices of different people in very different contexts, presented through five theatrical works:

Kalimat (Words)
Playwright: Helena Tornero. Directed by: Jorge Picó (Catalonia)
May 30
Tornero shows the personal experiences of refugees at the Nea Kavala Camp in northern Greece, with whom he carried out a theater workshop. Ten crisscrossing stories. The original presentation at the National Theater of Catalonia in fall of 2016 arouse a great deal of interest in the public. For the reading at La Abadía, Tornero will be updating the script to keep up with the most recent events. The proceeds from this reading, which will be put on thanks to the selfless contributions by ten actors and one musician, will be used for the project related with Kalimat, Paramythades (“storytellers” in Greek), which aspires to improve the living conditions of refugees through the stage arts.

Ankomsten (The Sighting)
Directed by: Thaddeus Phillips (Sweden)
May 31 and June 1-2
 An endearing visual show about the arrival of an immigrant at an unknown city, not knowing the language or customs. Where and in what era the story takes place are left up to the viewers' imagination. A man of the theater born in the US, who has taken part in several Robert Lepage projects, Phillips was inspired by the graphical novel The Arrival (Spanish title: Emigrantes) by the Shaun Tan, an Australian whose father was Chinese.

Good Tidings (Buenas nuevas)
Written and directed by: Naomi Yoeli (Israel)
June 6, 7 and 8
Real letters written from 1939 to 1941, originally in Yiddish and Polish, between a youth who went to live in Palestine, then under the British mandate, and his family members left behind in Eastern Galicia (then part of Poland, now Lithuania). In the twenty-first century, the granddaughter brought up in Israel uses the letters and a few objects to recreate this personal testimony, which is look back at the past of both Europe and Israel all at once.

Debate with CEAR (Spanish Refugee Aid Commission)
June 14

Los invitados (The Guests)
Directed by: Ximo Flores (Valencia)
June 15-16
Based on documentation collected on-site on the island of Lesbos, the company Colectivo Fracasados describes parallels between today's influx of refugees and the departure by those who left Spain, fleeing from the Spanish Civil War and post-war period. It is a show rich in contrasts, that merges storytelling, debate with the audience, movement and projections.

Me llamo Suleimán (My Name Is Suleiman)
Directed by: Mario Vega (Canary Islands)
June 21, 22 and 23
This odyssey by a young African who attempts to reach Europe is an adaptation of the novel with the same name, by Antonio Lozano. Trucks. Boats. Abuse by traffickers. Dangers. Pain. Humiliation. Despair.
The original novel was inspired by the real experience of a 16-year-old boy from Mali who reached the island of Gran Canaria in a cayuco boat. He ended up at the school where Lozano was teaching and had to attend language, mathematics and other classes even though he did not understand a word of Spanish.

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