Geography: Europe > Western Europe > Germany
Year: 2016
Produced by: Schaubühne Berlin and International Institute of Political Murder with the PROSPERO European theatre network
Creative Team: Text and direction by Milo Rau; created with performers Ursina Lardi and Consolate Sipérius; design by Anton Lukas.
Synopsis: Compassion places the account of a European aid worker beside that of a Belgian-Burundian performer. Their stories move between refugee routes through the Mediterranean and the conflicts of Central Africa. The production questions why some deaths produce extensive European sympathy while others are treated as distant background events. Interviews with NGO workers and people affected by war inform the text, but the production also exposes the theatrical construction of humanitarian testimony. A photograph or emotional story may create compassion while leaving the political causes of displacement untouched. The contrast between the two performers makes unequal authority visible: one has the institutional power to travel as a helper, while the other is associated with the region being helped. Migration is examined through the European systems that represent suffering and decide which displaced people can become recognisable victims.
Source: International Institute of Political Murder, official production page: https://international-institute.de/en/compassion-the-history-of-the-machine-gun/ Academy of the Arts of the World, performance listing and production background: https://www.adkdw.org/en/article/1286_compassion_the_history_of_the_machine_gun