DE VREEMDELINGENSHOW

THE STORY.

A training actor with a refugee background is almost always typecast as ‘the stranger’. This usually equates to the bad guy, villain or terrifying and unpredictable other. They imitate learning situations such as robberies, hostage situations and other types of aggression and crime.

“During my trainings I prepare people for situations that they with 99.9% certainty will not experience. I give people a nightmare to learn from in a safe way, in the hope that it will remain a fictional situation,” training actor Shahram Zadeh once told me. Their origins, physical characteristics and refugee background ensure that they are selected to play roles that the training agencies think suit them. In fact, they often accentuate their otherness by, for example, exaggerating their accent and dressing up when they are in their role. In short, they commodify their strangeness and exploit it. These training actors often find themselves in a situation in which their roles and power situations constantly change. They have to deal with prejudices more often than the average Dutch person. It is these prejudices that determine their working lives and define which role(s) they play, both within the training and in their ‘real’ lives. In De Vreemdelingenshow (translated to The Stranger Show) they give a glimpse into their lives that exposes an uncomfortable reality for many of us.