January - March 2007
performances March 2007: Wed. 21, Thur. 22, Fri. 23, Sat. 24  &
Wed. 28, Thur. 29, Fri. 30, Sat. 31: every night at 8.08 PM 
in the former Tax Building de POEL: Poel 14, Gent

LAPD’s theater work is gaining attention in Europe due to the social challenges there now: pressures to dismantle the social safety net, demands of war on terror, war on drugs, all American exports. Theater artists there, where work has been pretty aestheticized for many years --are now discovering engaged theater as a means of understanding and resisting current pressures.
January through March LAPD worked with Nieuwpoort Theater and a community cast in Gent and Unie der Zorgelozen in Kortrijk, Belgium to develop and present  Legal*Illegal, which specifically looks at the ways in which US policy impinges on Belgian sovereignty, including secret CIA flights, SWIFT and immigration policy.


Belgium Press about LEGAL*ILLEGAL - March 2007
Nieuwpoort theater magazine 
De Standaard interview 
De Standaard - tussen Skid Row en Roma 
Cutting Edge review Legal*Illegal
Cutting Edge - English


The CIA did not fly above Belgium – they say. They don’t torture in Abu Ghraib – they say.  Iraq is hiding nuclear weapons and Guantanamo Bay is just a regular prison. Since the beginning of the ‘war on terror’ a part of the international politics and the security policies are in a legal limbo zone.
Actions that do not conform with human rights conventions are committed in the name of your safety, that is if you live in Fortress Europe. Who is outside cannot get inside, and those inside are not able to meaningfully engage in shaping the laws made “in their interest”. The matter at hand is complex, and often we are facing our own incapability to deal with it.  In the meantime the debate is getting foggy and targeted action becomes impossible. America – Europe, citizen – immigrant, social – artistic, fiction – facts. LEGAL * ILLEGAL is a legal performance at the edge.

John Malpede: “ The project is about what is happening in the margins of our well regulated legal system.  We like to think that we live secure under the warm blanket of the rule of law.  But, law and justice do not manage to cover the whole map and the margins are manipulated to achieve desired political effects.”

         

We ended up making a 1:30 hour-long performance, in three languages, that traveled through the building with live music by the squatters band D'ONDERHOND that was sold out every night for two weeks.

The performance started with a funeral march in which a coffin in the shape of an airplane was wheeled-in.  The coffin opened and Bush stepped out, beat boxing the National Anthem and unrolling a banner “Mission Accomplished”.    

The audience sat in orange school desks and when Bush exits they where treated to a class in coersive and non-coersive interrogation methods by the CIA and the Jay Bybee memo.   

Then the audience was directed to go upstairs and split up in small groups to witness ‘special cases’ in 7 little rooms where they saw 3, 7-minute-performances. Amongst others; two Roma children reading their eviction notice from ‘the POEL’ which they had squatted a month earlier, a young Iraqi and a Turkish man sharing their stories about Islam and Belgium culture, the interrogation of an Algerian man seeking asylum in Belgium, the testimony of a child soldier from Angola about the future of children and a movement piece about ‘breaking the cycle of violence’.

The first 7 minute performances ended abruptly when other cast members  burst into the little rooms (with an image of Bush hanging around their neck) while proclaiming parts of Bush’s “The U.S. does not torture” speech.   In the hall, while the groups changed rooms, a Polish coffee lady handed out coffee and flyers for a vacation to the secret U.S. torture prisons near Stare Kiejkuty airport in Poland, and a woman in a Medieval dress proclaimed the ‘Habeas Corpus Act’ in old Flemish.

While singing the Spanish freedom fighters song ‘a las barricadas’ everyone came downstairs again for the last part of the performance. A social worker, who worked with the Gent police told his experience of the eviction of the Roma from Gent and the Algerian man responded to the movie ‘The Battle of Algiers’. Followed by a duet between LAPDer Rickey Mantley and Henk Bourgeois from Unie der Zorgelozen about their experience with solitary confinement in psychiatric wards of jail and hospital: “Habeas Corpus; where is the body?!” Chaos and madness when the whole cast gets up and joins D'ONDERHOND’s version of Pink Floyd’s ‘Brick in the Wall’. And then, at the very end, the coffee lady’s sister shows up; Mariola Przewlocka. She points to the coffin/airplane and describes the secrecy that was demanded from her, director of Szymany airport, while the special planes where landing. “…I think they wanted as few witnesses  as possible…................................................................................”