Translation and workshop presented
& supported by the Goethe-Institut Toronto
with the Canada Council for the Arts
Those Who Knew by Enis Maci is a complex mosaic of voices and geographic vantagepoints that zooms in on three seemingly unrelated acts of violence in North America, Asia and Europe. Focusing on the silent witnesses instead of the perpetrators, the play explores the underlying systems and networks that enable violence in our time.
Port St. Lucie, Florida, USA: In this city near the swamps, there’s little more beyond golf courses and retirement homes, so when teenager Tyler Hadley sends an invitation to his WhatsApp group to a party at his parents’ house, just about everyone shows up. Soon, the party spirals out of control. As this respectable but unremarkable family home gets trashed, Tyler confesses to his friend that he just killed his parents—only nobody believes him.
Koruyaka Köyü, Yalvaç, Isparta, Turkey, Asia: Across the world in Turkey, Nevin Yıldirim is the victim of a crime and the perpetrator is a relative. She wants him punished, but Nevin can't wait for justice. Where are the boundaries between understandable impulse and blind affect? And can revenge ever be legitimate?
Dinslaken-Lohberg, Germany, Europe: The former industrial landscapes of the Ruhr area are marked by unemployment and declining population. Over the decades, parallel Salafist societies have developed in this region shaped by migration between closed coal mines, industrial wastelands and soccer stadiums. The young Nils Donath, born as the son of “a completely normal family”, soon turns to the most radical break imaginable with Western culture.
Like a drone, Enis Maci observes disturbing topographies and describes with great poetry—drawing on the myths of antiquity and the bottomlessness of the internet alike—a world that has gone off the rails and seems to have lost its moral compass.
The term “topography” is defined as a "detailed description or representation on a map of the natural and artificial features of an area”, but also used in anatomy as “the distribution of parts or features on the surface of or within an organ or organism”. When considering how to present this epic, urgent and poetic text to a Canadian audience, I am immediately faced with questions about how Canada is situated within the landscapes Maci dissects—what are its instances of silent witnessing? What is Canada’s “topography of violence”?
Enis Maci (1993, Gelsenkirchen) is the author of the essay collection
Eiscafé Europa (Suhrkamp 2018) and a number of plays, including
WUNDER (Suhrkamp Theater 2021). She is the editor of
A Fascinating Plan (Spector 2021) and
Filamentous Magic Carpets (März 2022). Mitwisser premiered at Schauspielhaus Vienna in 2018. The original production was invited to Mülheimer Dramatikertage and Autorentheatertage Berlin. The play has also been staged at Nationaltheater Mannheim, E.-T.-A.-Hoffmann-Theater Bamberg, and Deutsches Theater Göttingen, and in numerous student productions.
THOSE WHO KNEW (MITWISSER)
Written by Enis Maci
Translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte for the Goethe-Institut Theatre Library
Public Reading performed by Jeff Lillico, James Dallas Smith, Diane Flacks, Rami Khan and Navtej Sandhu
Directed by Birgit Schreyer Duarte
Dramaturgy and Host: Yizhou Zhang
Premiered at Schauspielhaus in Vienna, 2018
Nominated for the 2019 Mülheim Drama Prize
Enis Maci voted "Best Young Author" at Theater Heute Annual Survey, 2018
Part of the Goethe-Institut focus on sustainability
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