De Zilveren Draad

DE ZILVEREN DRAAD – GITA HACHAM
(scroll down for English)

De Zilveren Draad gaat over oorlog, toxic masculinity en het vrouwenlichaam. De Zilveren Draad is een toneelstuk dat het verleden en het heden onthult van een soldaat en een officier die hetzelfde lot delen door noodzaak. Ze bevinden zich onder een boom in een schemerig gebied, ze scheppen op over hun ‘heldendaden’. In een buitengewone combinatie van rauw realisme en poëzie, vertelt het stuk de rituelen van het bereiken van volwassenheid, van mannelijkheid en verkrachtingen als onderdeel van de praktijk van oorlog. U wordt ondergedompeld in mythische beelden en prachtige metaforen in combinatie met rauwe taal.

Doel
Het stuk is geschreven, we hebben twee fantastische acteurs, we zijn druk aan het repeteren en wat we nu nodig hebben is een prachtig lichtplan en een mooi geluid! Hierom starten we deze Crowdfunding. We hopen dat jullie ons gunnen dit stuk op de beste manier af te maken.

Inspiratie
Schrijfster en regisseuse Gita Hacham liet zich inspireren door de zittingen van de Joegoslavië-tribunalen in Den Haag. Er waren soldaten die terecht stonden voor het plegen van verkrachtingen. Een van de soldaten vertelde dat het een bevel van bovenaf was. Je wordt geëxecuteerd als je die order niet uitvoert. Stel dat je het fysiek niet kunt doen als man? Dit tezamen met verkrachting als instrument van oorlogsvoering beïnvloedde Hacham diep. In feite is er niets veranderd. Dit jaar werden 7000 Yezidi vrouwen verkracht door Isis en hiervoor ontvoerde Boko Haram meer dan 270 meisjes in Nigeria. Om een paar recente voorbeelden te noemen.

Een poëtische vertelling vormt de basis van de Zilveren Draad. Hacham studeerde middeleeuwse volksverhalen en sagen waarin de heldhaftige daden van strijders worden verheerlijkt. Ze gaf dit haar eigen draai, waardoor haar poëtische teksten een soort ode werden aan wreedheid. Het is een commentaar op moderne heroïsche verhalen zoals afgebeeld in films en media. Het toneelstuk ‘De Zilveren draad’ geeft een vrouwelijk perspectief op een eeuwenoud onbespreekbaar thema.

Voorstellingen:
6 september 20.30 uur
7 september 18.00 uur
14 september 20.30 uur
15 september 16.30 uur
Toegang: € 12,50
Locatie: Oostblok Theater Sajetplein 39 1091 DB Amsterdam
http://amsterdamfringefestival.nl/programma/the-silver-thread-de-zilveren-draad/

http://gitahacham.nl/

Tekst en regie: Gita Hacham
Acteurs:
Ayrton Kirchner
Vincent Lodder
Team:
Wulan Dumatubun
Leander van Splunter
Licht Tycho van Iwaarden
Geluid Mico van zalingen
Beeld Wendy Veldkamp
Foto en film Paco Nunez

The Silver thread

A playabout war/toxic masculinity/and the female body

The Silver Thread is a play which examines the concept of individual will in the case of a soldier in his role as executor of rape as a tactic of warfare. The play explores the mythology ofwar, of the very foundations of patriarchy and the destructive power of toxic masculinity.

Goal
The play is written, we have two great actors and are very busy rehearsing the play. Now all we need is to finish it with a wonderful lighting plan and sound. This is why we start this Crowdfunding. We hope you will grant us the opportunity to finalize in style.

Inspiration
Rape or other forms of sexual violence committed by combatants during armed conflict or military occupation are often viewed as spoils of war, but in cases of ethnic conflict it has broader sociological motives of psychological warfarein order to humiliate the enemy. It is also recognised as genocide and/orethnic cleansing when committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a targeted group.

It is not confined to some distant past. In the 1990s in Rwanda there were estimated to be some 500,000 victims of rape, in the Balkan War some 50,000 victims. International instruments to prosecute perpetrators were only introduced in that decade. Indeed, The Silver Thread was initially inspired by a news report from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague in the early 2000s - in which a former soldier accused of war crimes offers as a defence for his role in the systematic rape of the civilian prisoners, that if he did not obey orders then he would face execution as a traitor.

The writer Gita Hacham tried to imagine what it must be like as a soldier to face this dilemma. Unpalatable as it is, during war we may be able to accept the proposition of ‘kill or be killed’, but can we extend this to ‘rape or be killed’? Is it this threat alone that turns fathers, husbands, brothers and sons into rapists? In war do the perpetrators see the act as a crime? Do they even see the act as sexual, or is it a means of total domination and the ultimate expression of power over someone else?

The Play
The Silver Thread is a two-hander between an officer who is charged with executing a soldier in his command who has failed to fulfil orders to rape female civilians. Performed on a stark and open stage, it is the power of the plays language and the two actors that provide the dramatic tension of the piece.

The pieceshows the revealing memories of a soldier and an officer who share the same fate from sheer necessity. They brag about their heroic deeds. In an extraordinary combination of raw realism and poetry, the piece recounts the rituals of reaching adulthood, of masculinity and brutal rapes as part of the practice of making war.

Writer and director Gita Hacham was inspired by the sittings of the Yugoslavia tribunals in the Hague. There were soldiers standing trial who were accused of committing rape. One of the soldiers said that it was an order from above. You were executed if you didn’t carry out that order. By your own people. That affected Hacham deeply. She thought: suppose you can’t do it physically as a man? The poetic narrative forms the basis of The Silver thread. Hacham studied medieval folktales and sagas in which the heroic deeds of warriors are glorified. She gave this her own twist, whereby her poetic monologue became a kind of ode to cruelty. It’s a commentary on modern-day heroic stories as depicted in films and the media such as CNN. Afterwards she spliced in the realistic dialogues. Alongside the mythical images and beautiful metaphors, she wanted to give hard reality a place as well.

It is now 2018, and in the last couple of years newsreaches the West of the sexual abuse of some 7,000 Yazidi women at the hands ofISIS in Iraq; an alleged sex pest holds the most powerful political office inthe world; it seems we are confronted daily with revelation after shocking revelation of the seedier goings on in show business; the burgeoning #metoo and #timesup movement seek to bring an end to sexism and the dominance of toxic male power; there is genuine debate on what is acceptable and, more pertinently, unacceptable sexual behaviour.

The Silver Thread offers no judgement, it provides no answers, but it seeks to join the debate and confront its audience with some very unpleasant truths about how society and gender roles are constructed today.

As a writer/director Gita Hacham find it important that her voice as a woman is heard when it come to this subject: "Women shouldn’t only be portrayed as victims. Writing and directing the Silver thread is my form of resistance."