This
morning we visited the Genocide Memorial Centre. The director of the centre
welcomed the Cambodians. He has been a good friend of Vann Nath, one of the 15
survivors of Tuol Sleng, the prison in which so many Cambodians have been
tortured and killed ( and which director ‘’Duch’’ is still the only convicted
in regard to the Cambodian genocide). Vann Nath survived because he was a
painter. Some of his paintings will be shown in our performance. The Centre
has a high level exhibition on the Rwandese genocide, serving loads of
information on all aspects – from the colonial history to political context to the
actual day-to- day path to genocide – and very personal stories and pictures.
It reveals structures behind – and has a
few rooms dealing with ‘other’ genocides: the extinction of the Herero’s in Namibia, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Bosnia and of course: Cambodia.. We paid tribute to the
deaths by putting a rose on one of the mass graves, containing part of the
250.000 corpses from Kigali’s
former inhabitants.. These days
are filled with organising. After, before and during rehearsals, Fer (arts
direction) Robert (technical manager)
and Nan ( general coordination) do the
productional and publicity stuff. So while Nan wrote press releases and texts
for posters and flyers, Fer made the design (in collaboration with his sister
in Amsterdam)
and Robert made sketches for the carpenters who have to build platforms and a
reading table. Theaters turn out to have a max of 5 spots and no lighting grid,
so they have to improvise a lot, and still hire poles and lights and amplifiers.
Thank god the performance was once projected on the mobile stage in the open
air, so we don’t need much. But this time we want to use live video, and
Annemarie wants to make a nice sound score, balancing the Khmer and the
Kinyarwanda voices.Meanwhile
she’s constructing miracles on stage, with dear Sal at her side. Sal was the
production manager of the first version in Cambodia 2009, and has returned as
program director of Amrita, after two years of ‘fullbright’ in one of the coldest places in the USA, Buffalo.
Now he’s here with us as company manager, translator and…the best assistant
director one can think of.
Looking for clay which is used in the performance.
impressive!!!!
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