MORE THAN WORDS: Silence, presence and secret languages

Guest blog by Marieke Schippert

MORE THAN WORDS - London workshop

In March, my 9 year old son and I flew to London for a training in an international setting. It was named MORE THAN WORDS and was about finding ways of communicating with people without words, for example with people with whom we don’t share the same language. Some of the tasks were meant to be done in the city: listening to the sound of different districts and neighbourhoods, observing the body language of people there, and determining ways of communication without sharing the same language.

Silence

As a single mom, I had to bring my son to the training in London, and we performed the tasks in the city together. The first tour brought us to Tottenham. First of all, the buildings there spoke to us. They said, that the people there didn't have too much money, and not so much space. Many of them were drying their clothes out of their windows. The shops there said, that many people there were immigrants, who wanted to preserve parts of their lifestyle in their new home: we saw lots of shops that made us feel like being in African or Asian countries.

Soon after arriving in Tottenham, my son purposefully directed me to one of the centres of communication without words: the playground and sports area in the park.  In that park, there were different public sports facilities: a football field, a basketball court and some fitness devices. Two young adults were playing football, without talking to each other. My son wanted to play as well, so he moved closer and closer to them, until one of them kicked the ball in his direction, inviting him to play. They communicated perfectly without words.

Another young man was shooting hoops on the basketball court. He was very good at it. Some admirers stood by and watched him play. They as well communicated very well without words - he knew, that they admired him, and they knew, that he appreciated them watching.

In the fitness area, there were several different people using the fitness equipment. Very diverse people of different ages, from very young to quite old, different skin colors, singles and couples, men and women. Together, they performed an act of ballet: Without talking, they freed the fitness devices and changed from one to another in perfect harmony, sensing the wishes of the others. Specially two people, a couple, seemed to know each other for a very long time - they were in perfect harmony and matched perfectly. They had a routine they performed without talking at all. They always changed the devices at the same time, did the exercises in the same rhythm. The communication between these people was just like a dance routine.

No wonder people, who work with refugees, often use sports as a means of coming together, getting into contact and achieving something together. Sport is one of the best, most efficient ways of communicating without words.

Presence

While we were in the park, school finished, and the pupils came out of a school nearby. Many of them crossed the park to go to the subway or to catch a bus. The girls were walking two by two, close together, talking quitly with one another. The boys were walking two by two as well - but talking very loudly, shouting all over the place, sometimes walking with great distance between them, expanding their conversation over half of the park.

Even if I couldn't understand their words, I could still read their body-language. And that language is gendered, influenced by gender roles. The girls were saying: "We better stick together and don't take up too much space!" and "We‘d better not attract too much attention on us!", while the boys were saying "I/We own this place!".

Their behaviour told me a lot about the society they live in. I understood, that men and women are not equal, that men are allowed to take up way more space than women, and that they are taught from a very young age on, that they rule the world. Girls are taught to hold back, to be pleasant and to admire the boys. The society they live in must be fundamentally gender biased.

Another presence that marked my son and me very much was the presence of Black people in London. Coming from Berlin/Germany, we were in awe. My son is Black, I am White. In Germany, even in Berlin, we are very often stared at. People keep asking themselves how we are related. My son gets stared at, touched without even asking and asked a lot about his Blackness. He was overwhelmed when we were in Brixton, waiting outside the subway for a friend. He was amazed by the great number of Black people that came out of the subway – they were the majority! That is an experience that he never makes in public German spaces (only in empowerment settings). He loved seeing so many Black people in the subway in general, and also finding them in very different professions in London. Their presence was very empowering to him.

The presence of Black people in London versus their presence in Berlin tells a lot about racism and postcolonial relations. For us foreigners, the situation in London seemed a bit better than in Berlin, but many housing areas still seemed quite segregated, which shows how both societies are still fundamentally structured by racism.

Secret Languages

In Tottenham, we went into a little café. Inside, there were two men speaking an african language, two men speaking french, and two men speaking a slavic language. As they all spoke different languages at their tables, they were able to have a very intimate ambience while talking. My son and I spoke German, which seemed to be unusual to the others, since they looked quite a lot at us. But we, as well, had our intimate language. It still matters a lot, what language you speak - the reactions vary very much depending on what counts as "normal" in that area, and what prejudices people have about people speaking your language. In general, speaking French for instance provokes other reactions than speaking an African language in a public space. These reactions are racially biased. These biased reactions are a very powerful way of communicating without words – most of the micro-aggressions linked to racism and other forms of discrimination are exercised without saying a single word. Looks and body language are more than enough to be very clear about what a person thinks about someone else. As we get more an more conscious about racism and discrimination in general, people often start taking care about the things they are saying – but we should focus as much on our general expression and body language. They are way more unconscious and direct ways of communicating and reflect what we really think, even if we don’t say it.

Body language and the tone of the voice are secret languages that also told me al lot about the people in that café in Tottenham. Even if I couldn’t understand what these pairs were saying, I still got to know a lot about them. First of all, that they had some relation to a country in which a different language was spoken. Their way of speaking, their voice, and their attitude, told me a lot about them : How they were feeling, a little about their character, and something about the relationship between them and their counterpart. I could also get some information about what kind of topics they were discussing, or at least, what the topic meant to them emotionally. For example, it was easy to tell, if they were discussing work topics, private topics, leisure topics or if they were fighting. It got very clear, if the topic was serious and very important to the person, if it was emotionally charged, or if it was a light topic.

Without words, we can understand very important things: emotions, relation and intentions. What’s lacking, is the concrete theoretical content. We maybe can’t discuss very theoretical issues without a common language. But we can use emotions, relation an our intentions to communicate in a very profound way. That means, that we need to get involved in a different way that what we mainly see as a professional relationship when we work with refugees for example. We need to go into a relation with them, show and share our emotions, and be clear in our intentions. On that basis, understanding will be easy. We also need to reflect the basis of our work and be very self-aware and self-scrutinizing about our own biases and prejudices. That is the foundation for going into an open, un-biased and true relation and communication.

Marieke Schippert works with NARUD - an African community organisation in Berlin.

Controlling the Narrative

The Town Hall Affair

In the week that saw Robert Lepage's new production SLĀV closed in the face of accusations of racism, I want to explore some of the underlying issues which may be leading to the wave of protests sweeping over intercultural performances recently.  SLĀV is far from the first production by a white male director to be condemned in this way.  Think of The Orphan of Zhao,  In the Depths of Deep Love, and Exhibit B.  In most of these cases, the question of casting to race (or not) has been central -  but Exhibit B had an entirely black cast, and was still widely (and in my view very unfairly) denounced as the racist work of a white director.  The question seems to me not only who performs a role, but, perhaps more crucially, who controls the narrative.

The question has been at the heart of three very remarkable productions I've seen over the last few weeks.  In The Town Hall Affair, the Wooster Group reproduce the famous 1971 “Dialogue on Women’s Liberation”, chaired by the pugnacious novelist Norman Mailer.  Or rather, they reproduce the documentary film called Town Bloody Hall, produced by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, and released in 1979.  In the play, excerpts from this film (and from Mailer's own vanity movie, starring himself as a film director running for President) are played on screen, while the actors synchronise the dialogue, right down to the ers, ums and coughs.  The effect is at once very funny and deeply disconcerting.  It points up that, just as Mailer, Germaine Greer and Jill Johnston battled for control of the evening through the use (or subversion) of the conventional structures of a panel discussion (and the production redresses the balance by allowing Johnston the last word that Mailer had not admitted); so the filmed record, just by being a mediated record, has itself become the narrative.  By reproducing the dialogue of the film, the Wooster Group dispute its absolute authority.  As Theodor Adorno argued, in mimesis there is a kind of doubling - a hint that the "reality" of the "real" (or here, of the accepted narrative, which is perhaps the closest we can come to the "real") is not absolute.  By exposing the performed nature of the "real", they suggest the potential for alternatives - other ways of doing things.

Lady Eats Apple

Back to Back Theatre's Lady Eats Apple also disrupts and disputes a received narrative - in this case, the book of Genesis.  There are two gods - one played by a learning disabled actor, one not.  The god played by the learning disabled actor creates a man and a woman - also played by learning disabled actors.  He says that they are perfect.  He also says that they are not very intelligent.  In the play's final act, this Adam and Eve, expelled from Eden to become cleaners in the vast space of the Barbican auditorium, take tentative, delicate steps towards an intimate relationship.  They also try to revive the god played by the neuro-normative actor: but he is dead.  Of course he is.  We can't rely on the old myths any more - we have to re-create ourselves in our own image.

Fatherland

In Fatherland, another superb LIFT show at the Lyric Hammersmith, these questions are applied to our own country, and to personal relations between fathers and sons.  Subtitled Songs and stories from a forgotten England, the play endeavours, through staging verbatim interviews, to find a theatrical space for working-class men from the North of England.  These are voices we rarely hear on our stages - "I've never even been in an effing theatre before" says one interviewee - and have rarely heard in our political spaces either.  Until, of course, the Brexit referendum, which another character calls "an opportunity to kick Westminster in the bollocks."  The tensions between the men portrayed in the play and the men who made it are palpable - and deliberately not resolved.  If theatre aims to "give voice", does that not suggest that somehow "voice" is something in the gift of theatre-makers?  Does our control of "voice" and "narrative" not undermine our intention to disturb and challenge?  Are we not every bit as much part of the status quo as the political system we think we are battling?  As one of the characters in Fatherland says to the author and directors: "You're going on a little daytrip to get ideas and make it seem like you really care about what life is like here for people like me....    and you don't.  You just don't."