No Woman's Land

Dr Ildikó Rippel, Zoo Indigo Theatre Company
No Woman’s Land (NWL)

The practice research project No Woman’s Land NWL(2015-2017) explored the historical performance walk as a methodology to develop a dramaturgy of migration in reference to kinesthetic empathy. The project explored whether the re-tracing of the 220-mile walk taken by Rippel’s grandmother Lucia in 1945 from Brzeźnica Poland to Pulspforde, Germany could produce a change of the performer’s body through an “authentic” physical experience, marked by exhaustion and the somatic memory of endurance. The project was recorded and documented on a daily blog to disseminate the research on a lesser told narrative of World War II through focusing on women’s experiences of traumatic migration. During the walk Rippel interviewed persons who had similar experiences as World War II refugees and questioned experts on the history of Silesian refugees through accessing the archives of the Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliationin Berlin. In 2016 NWL was developed into a short documentary film, presented in the UK and internationally, and a theatre performance which toured UK arts centres.
The aim of NWLwas to undergo a physical endurance, to gain an embodied understanding of a migratory experience, and to develop a dramaturgy to translate this experience into performance. In the theatre performance the performers walk on treadmills, and the audience, through witnessing the exhaustion, also potentially experience a sense of the endurance through kinesthetic empathy. Furthermore spectators have the opportunity to walk on the treadmills themselves to gain empathy with migratory walking. This dramaturgical strategy hopes to produce an authenticity when engaging with historical events. Here kinesthetic empathy potentially provides the ontological ground for historical and political knowledge. The project investigated the historical walk as a methodology to enable a sense of authenticity in the representation of the migrant mother in performance, through the act of walking and the staging of the exhausted female body.