Michael Littig

Michael Littig

“What will this day be to me?
How do I call it?
The day that made me know
That I am a human being.
The day that make me realize
That I am a part of people.
The day I taste chocolate.”
-Ojullu Opiew Ochan,
Ethiopian Gambela refugee.

I remember the day that Ojullu gave me this poem. He had gotten the chance to perform as an actor for the first time in front of an audience the day before and he was overjoyed. I can still remember us walking through the desert and the way he seemed to skip through the air as he recounted his feelings.
It was also the first time he had ever tasted chocolate in his life. I remember asking him in that moment, “Really? You’ve never tasted chocolate?” As he placed the chocolate in his mouth, he shared with me that “It looks like mud. It’s very sweet. It tastes like honey.”
Ojullu was a member of the Dadaab Theater Project, which facilitated an artistic exchange between theater students from America and refugees hailing from the war torn countries of Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. With my colleague Julianna Bloodgood, we created and facilitated the program in Dadaab for five months living and working in the world’s largest refugee camp with over 380,000 refugees.
Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I can still feel the way the young children from Ethiopia delicately trace my skin because they have never touched a white person. Or the advice my friends gave me, “Listen, if you hear a sound like, boom, ka, ka, ka, ka, the fighting is very far. But, if you hear whizzing sounds, woo, be very careful!” And then how after revealing such a disturbing truth, the laughter that followed as they enacted the dance of dodging bullets.
Humanity and one’s own story, I have come to learn through travel and experiences such as the Dadaab Theater Project are complex. The act of facing one’s own cultural assumptions and learning of another’s is often quite difficult. The beauty of theater is that the empty space can act as a neutralizer for this encounter and be used as peace building and diplomacy, beginning the healing process between one’s self and others. Travel and exchange, I have come to learn, can become an encounter of one’s own identity.
For the past six years, I have travelled three continents on a deep search of my own identity as an American theater artist. I have lived as a nomad studying shamans in the outer reaches of Mongolia and spent months living and working with survivors of war on the border of Somalia.
I wanted to learn, is theater necessary?
Is it essential as water, food, and love?
What is the magic of theater?

In these past six years and especially in the context of the Dadaab Refugee Camp, I have learned that storytelling, the theater’s oldest roots and heartbeat, is alive and well in the world. Like Odysseus and the many others who have come before, I have learned that stories will lead you home and uncover the truth. But, I have also learned that the truth is often complex and difficult.
As an American theater artist, I have learned that as a young nation in America we are able to invent ourselves, which carries with it the risk of being able to disconnect from our own history. The act of theater, for me, has now become an affirmative act of awakening and remembering. The spirit of imagination is something that affirms our existence on this planet and our personal identity, and is needed just as much as food and water. I have come to believe deeply in the role of the actor in our society to create a state of wakefulness, to heal and maintain our culture.
As I write this, Somalia is facing the worst drought in fifty years and has been labeled a humanitarian crisis, facing pre-famine conditions. The numbers of refugees fleeing to Dadaab are staggering and I am left feeling helpless.
In the midst of it all, I often find myself without words when one asks, “How was Africa?” or “Tell me about Mongolia.” I only know one thing: that, as an artist, I can tell the story. But, truth be told, I am afraid.
These words are my beginning.