Performance Situation Room "SO SORRY"

SO SORRY - Noha Ramadan, Lea Martini and Olivia Reschofsky
With guests Markus Balkenhol and Quinsy Gario

Thu 18 December / 19:00  / Het Veem Theater

SO SORRY is an event dedicated to the art and rhetoric of the public apology.

Within the last years there have been a growing number of apologies appearing in the public sphere, in various forms and voices: as perfectly staged national healing rituals in front of an audience, as impulsive and emotional YouTube videos, as judicial pleas or military statements, and TV talk-show appearances. The actors are leaders of nations, pop stars, cooking show hosts and baseball stars. In this evening we ask how these expressions of remorse and shame, and their calls to action, reflect and reinforce moments of regret from our own private lives.

SO SORRY is curated as a two-part event consisting of the performance Deeply Really Truly (Martini/Ramadan 2013) and the conversation piece HOST CLUB. The two parts are complementary in their different focus.

Deeply Really Truly is a performance of public apology speeches collected from the last three decades. The audience is invited to critically receive these word-gestures, to evaluate the poetics of both personal and national remorse, and to reflect on the affective capability of tactics that range from desperate, to pathetic, to dangerously cynical. 

HOST CLUB then gives stage to a discussion of more personal, local and current issues.

The participatory format was developed by theatre maker Marcel Schwald, and is inspired by the tradition of Japanese HOST CLUBS where conversations are offered as a service. The audience is hosted in small groups and asked to approach each other and the subject through the intimacy of the round table.

The derivation point for this part of the evening is the topic of public apologies in the local Dutch context, with a special focus on apologies that did or did not happen as a consequence of colonial history and entanglement of the Netherlands. Special guest are Markus Balkenhol and Quinsy Gario. Social anthropologist Markus Balkenhol will be interviewed about his research on the cultural heritage of slavery in Amsterdam. Multi-disciplinary story teller Quinsy Gario will explore apology in a performative intervention.

The project is curated by Noha Ramadan and Lea Martini and made possible by Het Veem Theater and the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Art). SO SORRY is part of the Life Long Burning (LLB) project, supported by the Cultural Program of the European Union.