“Darfur Plays” - Using Theatre To Build Bridges

Spotted on: Shadow and Act

A very inspiring documentary of a group of self-taught young actors in Dafur. They perform in the streets of their village and in the neighbouring refugee camp.

As someone from the 'West', Dafur is about war, human rights violation and ethnic cleansing. Dafur is chaos. It’s a place where Arabs are killing black people like sheep. It’s like a black planet without an ozone layer. So far my European view.

But in this documentary I saw artists who perform for their people, who spark the dialog and reach out to people who are perceived to be ‘the others’. So yes people also “live” there. They think about the future and make theatre plays. I saw artistic director Haythum Djalladien taking a cab in Darfur. (Small observation: the cab looked very new.)

There is still a war going on there! And it’s filthy. But it's also good to see change at work in Darfur.

Most interesting quote: Money runs out but ideas last.

Part 1


Part 2