A cream cake with crumbled nuts around the edges, topped with pieces of canned fruit. Semmier digs into the cake with his hand and puts a dollop in his mouth. It’s his birthday and he’s alone, the whole cake is for himself. During video calls with family in his home country, he keeps up appearances: he says there are at least twenty guests.
With a residence permit in his pocket and a cardboard sign in his hands with ‘house’ written in large letters, Semmier starts his new life. He waits for an hour at the bus stop. “What’s an hour of waiting after three and a half years of waiting in an asylum center,” he reassures himself. Freedom beckons, but behind it lie ‘walls of paper’, a system full of rules, the obligation to integrate, with loneliness as the predominant feeling.
In the theater performance Thinking of Holland actor George Tobal (1986) shows what life after the asylum seeker center (azc) looks like for many newcomers. He fled Syria with his family at the age of 12 and experienced years of uncertainty. His despair and fear are therefore palpable and genuine. Anyone who thinks they can build their own life after the asylum seekers’ center is called back by the Dutch system.
Before the performance, director Floris van Delft spoke to dozens of newcomers, employers, policymakers and young people from all over the Netherlands about their experiences with the integration system. His theater company WAT WE DOEN, which makes performances about current social dilemmas, has previously performed How I got talent for lifebased on the book of the same name by Rodaan Al Galidi. Where that story revolved around life in an asylum seekers’ center, dir Thinking of Holland focuses on what comes next: building a new life after receiving a residence permit.
Loneliness
Tobal is the only actor on stage, yet he is not alone on stage. About fifty visitors form the decor around him, spread out on chairs. Every now and then he points out someone, such as ‘Sophie’ who gives him a lift and ‘Jeroen’ the language buddy. For Semmier, these are meaningful contacts, perhaps even friendships, although the feeling does not appear to be mutual.
“When are you actually friends here?” Semmier asks out loud. Although he is surrounded by people, relationships remain distant and formal. The consultant, client supervisor, forms brigade: they do not come on his birthday, are not allowed to give ‘preferential treatment’ and keep their presence professional. They are not a real environment. That makes his loneliness all the more tangible.
The game is not spectacular, Tobal tells an emotional story of over an hour that is rich in anecdotes. He wants to tell a lot and mentions all kinds of scenarios, while between scenes he reads parts from a self-written manuscript for a book. In it, a Dutch woman flees to his country and she has to reintegrate. This role reversal makes it tangible what it is like to leave everything behind and start over somewhere. It is a nice break and creates rhythm and layering in the short anecdotes about his own integration.
The word ‘loneliness’ is never mentioned for a moment in the performance, and yet it is palpable everywhere. Semmier’s broad smile, the attempt to look great: “If I laugh, I don’t cry,” the apparently funny scene with the cake, all together gives a painful stab of what loneliness means.
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