HUMAN SHIELDS

Based on "Escudos Humanos"
by Patricia Portela

INSPRIRATION
How do adolescents assume responsibility when they have to?
What does their protest look like?
What do I take with me when I leave for a foreign country to prevent a war?
What do I give my life for?

DYNAMICS
As part of the cooperation "Human Echoes" with the Brazilian theater group Cia. Arthur Arnaldo from São Paulo, the idea of working with the play "Escudos Humanos" by Patricia Portela came up in the AlarmTheater.

ORIENTATION
In Brazil, hundreds of thousands of pupils and undergraduates are protesting for their right to education. The Secundarista-movement is just one of many world-wide examples of young people who, 50 years after the´68 generation´s protests, start to campaign for their rights – for their future.

DECISION
"We are ready to change the world.
What must be, must be.
NOW! IMMEDIATELY!"

ACTION
13 young people of the AlarmTheater´s International Youth Ensemble go to the streets – playful, serious, quiet, loud.

DETERMINED!
The street theater production "Schutzschilde" does not simply ask what is worth fighting for, it rather asks what this fight can look like. What happens, when young people decide to prevent a war by using their bodies as human protective shields?
Can that be taken seriously or does it stay the childish fantasy of the superhero whose cape grants him unimagined powers for a short duration of time before disappearing into the invisibility of his everyday life?

A multimedia street theater production is developing under the direction of Dietlind Budde and Harald Otto Schmidt. It is reminiscent of a montage of materials, from retrieved to newly created sounds, videos, and words. The moving scenery by artist Rebecca Budde de Cancino and the young actors´ infectious energy will for one evening transform Bielefeld’s Klosterplatz into a place of departure. The actors will, like playing children, again and again spontaneously decide, how their story plays out.Balancing between fun and earnestness, this production asks for the consequences of our decisions for ourselves and for the world we live in.