Human dignity belongs to everyone, including foreigners
The “Human Rights Defenders of the Future” the youth group of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, held a Forum Theatre performance on 10 December, on World Human Rights Day. The interactive performance portrayed the problems refugees and foreigners face living in Hungary.
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Váltás magyarra
We worked on the performance for three months with 10 refugee and Hungarian youth. The team members included youth of Afghan, Ukrainian, Pakistani, Yemeni, and Palestinian origins. We drew inspiration for the problems faced by foreigners in Hungary from two sources: on the one hand, the team members’ own experiences, and on the other hand, meetings with experts and decision-makers in Józsefváros, the 8th District of Budapest. We learned about numerous violations of fundamental rights, and our young team selected two of them: hate crimes and discrimination against foreigners, and access to housing. We worked with these two topics in our Forum Theatre scenes.
The Forum Theatre method aims to change human relations and oppressive power structures through dialogue in order to create a more equal society. It is an interactive theater method in which the audience is given the opportunity to stop and change the performance. They can intervene in the events on stage and even take to the stage themselves. The audience usually consists of people who are affected by the problem depicted in the scene(s). In Forum Theatre, we can take on the role of the oppressed person to try to change the situation and help them achieve their goal.
During an intensive three-day camp, we wrote the script for the two scenes together with the youth, drawing on their own experiences with xenophobic landlords and condescending civil servants.
Our Forum Theatre performance was titled Home, (Bitter)Sweet Home. On the day of the performance, the Internép Café, located on Budapest’s most diverse street, was filled with a diverse audience of all nationalities and ages. We were happy to welcome municipality employees and decision-makers from Józsefváros, whom we had met throughout our course, among our audience.
The Forum Theatre method provided an opportunity for the audience, consisting mainly of foreigners living in Hungary, to engage with scenes depicting situations of oppressive power structures, where they could try out how they would stand up for themselves and their rights in the role of the oppressed against the oppressor. The discussion following the performance also touched on the legal means available to combat hate crimes and in what cases the Hungarian Helsinki Committee can provide legal assistance and representation.
In our performance, the audience saw two scenes in which a foreign character finds herself in a disadvantaged situation. In the first scene, the protagonist was confronted by a new xenophobic landlord, who unfairly and hatefully intimidated our hero, trying to force her and her family to move out of the apartment as soon as possible, simply because they were foreigners. In the second scene, viewers see the same foreigner in an office, where a civil servant makes it difficult for her to apply for social housing, showcasing institutionalised racism.
The audience came up with some great ideas on what to do when faced with a xenophobic landlord with hateful behaviour, or a civil servant who refuses to accept a foreigner’s application for social housing.
After this empowering experience that raised awareness of their rights, we hope that the foreigners living here will be able to put the ideas and actions they tried out on Wednesday evening to good use in real life.
