Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
Vielleicht, Photo: Dorothée Thébert Filliger 
 

Vielleicht

(Geneva)
by Noémi Michel, Ludovic Chazaud and Cedric Djedje
Director: Absent.e pour le moment
Studio

Studio

04/25/2023, 19.30–21.30

In December 2018, the Geneva theatre maker Cédric Djedje arrived in Berlin’s Wedding district on an artist’s grant to develop a new project. He discovered his subject matter practically on his doorstep: in the African Quarter, a neighbourhood that is inhabited by many Africans today. But the neighbourhood was actually named to glorify German colonialism and its territorial claims to power in Africa. What is more, several street names are at the time still dedicated to the perpetrators of German colonial crimes in South West Africa. They include Carl Peters, once feared even by German colonial officials as »Hanging Peters«. Cédric Djedje goes in search of clues in the African Quarter. On the one hand, he comes across activists from a postcolonial resistance group that has been trying for over forty years to get the streets renamed. On the other, there is the scarcely disguised everyday racism that Cédric, himself an Afro-European, is repeatedly exposed to in his work and his private life in Berlin. Cédric Djedje creates an urban chronicle in a dramatic form poised between political documentary theatre and humorous auto-fiction in which he appears in a duo with his co-performer Safi Martin Yé: an exploration between expedition and ghost-train ride, revealing Berlin from an outsider’s perspective holding up a mirror to the city. Only a few weeks after the play’s premiere in Geneva in November 2022, the first two streets in Berlin’s African Quarter were renamed — drawing great attention from the international press but going largely unnoticed by the German public. However, the street named after Carl Peters — following a personal intervention by Adolf Hitler — has retained its name with the official argument that it was »redesignated« in the 1980s fromPetersallee to Petersallee and now honours a Berlin city councillor by the name of Hans Peters. Similar relics of colonialism can also be found outside of Wedding and Berlin. Is there any chance for a change in the near future? The still undecided answer is indicated in the title of the play: Maybe.

 

With: Cédric Djedje, Safi Martin Ye and a Berlin-based activist
Conception: Cedric Djedje
Dramaturgy: Noémi Michel
Staging adviser, outer sight: Diane Muller, Ludovic Chazaud
Text: Ludovic Chazaud, Noémi Michel
Set design: Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro
Scenography advisor: Marco Ievoli
Set construction: Atelier de construction du Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
Choreography: Ivan Larson
Sound creation and music: Ka(ra)mi
Costume design / Khanga‘s confection: Tara Mabiala
Confections: Eva Michel
Graphic designer: Claudia Ndebele
Lighting design: Léo Garcia
Artistic collaboration / Technical Management: Joana Oliveira
Video design: Valeria Stucki
Make up design: Chaïm Vischel
Production management: Lionel Perrinjaquet, Pauline Coppée (Tutu Production)
Transcription of interviews: Eva Michel, Bel Kerkhoff-Parnell, Orfeo, Janyce Djedje
Video and Sound Management: Sebastien Baudet
Light Management: Leo Garcia
Technical Manager: Joana Oliveira
Production: Absent.e pour le moment, Le Grütli — Centre de production et de diffusion des Arts Vivants, Théâtre de Vidy-Lausanne 

Duration: ca. 120 minutes

Funding: Pro Helvetia, État de Genève, Loterie Romande, Agenda21 (Ville de Genève), Fondation Ernst Goehner, Fondation Leenards, Fonds de dotation Porosus, Fondation SIS, SSA — Société Suisse des Auteurs, Fondation Michalski, Pourcent Culturel Migros et Fondation Stanley Johnson