a small small world

Greenland, close to the north pole 26th April 2007: by accident a helicopter pilot sees a man in the ice, picks him up and saves his life. The man is Hamidur Rahman from Bangladesh, 30 years old and on his way to his dream land Canada – illegally, ill-equipped and on foot.

He has come from Germany, where he was about to be deported back to Bangladesh. It is not the first time Hamidur is running – from his political involvement in Bangladesh he runs away to Malaysia, from there he flees with his Malaysian wife and their son to Germany. But what is he running from and who will believe him? A clever villager on the global move, smart enough to get dangerously close to his dreams and failing to find a place in this world.

Two actors with minimal sets and a camera, re-imagine scenes from Hamidur’s life. The play questions the idea of representing or acting somebody else’s story and seeks to find grains of truth in the fiction that is called documentary.

A Flinntheater production

Created by Konradin Kunze (artistic direction and performance), Sophia Stepf (artistic direction), Abhishek Majumdar (performance), Tina Uebel, Sadia Swatee, Julia Fischer-Ortman, Hanna Mitzlaff, Philip Haucke, Del Penner, Dilawar Hussein, Helal Uddin u.a. (text and interviews)

In cooperation with ITI Deutschland and Goethe-Institutes Dhaka and Bangalore

Events

The premiere was on February 7, 2011 in Dhaka at the Goethe-Institut, the play then toured to Chittagong and Bangalore (Ranga Shankara and Goethe-Institut). In Germany, it has been shown at the Bremerhaven City Theatre as part of the Odyssee: Heimat festival and at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus (Hamburg Embassy). In 2013, it was presented as a staged reading at the “zeitgeist dc: documentary theatre” festival in Washington DC.

Press

Ingeniously crafted, a small, small world’ is peppered with sardonic humour that reiterates the futility of man-made national boundaries. The sets were minimal, but the fascinating technique of creating a small set of landscapes of the places Hamidur lived in, and projecting it on a screen was brilliant. Praiseworthy indeed was the immense research that went into making this play. For this, Konradin Kunze and Sophia Stepf must be applauded. A powerful script coupled with the convincing story-telling abilities of Abhishek Majumdar and Konradin Kunze made the play worth a watch.


The Hindu

Abhishek Majumdar writes on "Living with Difference in Intercultural Theatre" 

on www.culture360.org

What Stepf, Kunze and Majumdar have managed to create is a moving and emotional theatre experience that brings alive the human side of Rahman. Wonderful performances and the innovative use of properties for live projections rather than on stage helped recreate Rahman’s world.


India Today