Zoo Indigo

Photo: David Parry

It is a Thursday afternoon, best friends and theatre makers Ildikó and Rosie are sipping black coffees and talking about their theatre company with us. They are both performers, university lecturers and mothers. The duo say that Zoo Indigo’s performances stem from their own life stories – juxtaposing the banalities of the everyday with the extraordinary.

“We are particularly interested in the exploration of autobiography. We explore how to innovatively integrate new technologies into our projects. In our performance Under the Covers we invited the audience to ‘babysit’ our children, who appeared via video link on a projection screen behind us. We don’t just want any old pretty backdrop of mountains or trees; we like to experiment with performance,” Rosie says. “In No Woman’s Land, we will be using walking as a performative technique – something we have never done before.”

2015 marks seventy years since the end of the second world war and, after receiving Arts Council funding, Zoo Indigo are set to share an emotive story of family suffering to commemorate this. Their latest project No Woman’s Land involves the duo walking a gruelling 217 miles over the course of three weeks, from Poland to Germany, retracing the traumatic journey taken by Ildikó’s grandmother and her two children after they were expelled from Silesia in 1945.

Zoo Indigo will then construct a theatre performance based on the personal story, their experiences on the walk and women’s experiences during and after the war. They plan to merge video projections, archival footage, voiceovers and real stories, as well as fantasies, to powerfully portray and re-enact the post-apocalypse of 1945. The pair will be collaborating with Nottingham filmmaker Tom Walsh, who will document the walk and broadcast daily vlogs.

“My aunt, Siegrid Ederer, will be making part of the journey with me. My grandmother made the original journey pulling her in a cart, so for her it will be an incredibly emotional experience. I have spoken to her and she is very overwhelmed. It is upsetting for her, but ultimately very important. My father, born in 1949, will also walk part of the way.”
 

Photo: Dave Parry

During the post-war period, German citizens were forced out of eastern European countries by the Russian army, to Germany and Austria. There were convoys of carts yielding displaced ethnic Germans who were scattered out of former eastern territories of Germany, which would become Poland and the Soviet Union after the war. By 1950, approximately twelve million Germans had either fled or had been expelled from eastern Europe – often under horrendous circumstances. At least 473,000 Germans are reported to have died during the expulsion. We hear a lot about the suffering executed by Germans during the war, but very little of the suffering inflicted upon them.

The long-term aim of Nazi Germany had been to ‘Germanise’ the population of Czechoslovakia, Poland and parts of the Soviet Union. Of course, Germany lost the war before these plans could be implemented. Nazi war crimes were devastating, and the subsequent suffering of the German population was also unquestionably horrendous.

In October 1945, a New York Daily News report from occupied Berlin told readers, “An old peasant from Silesia said... ‘victims were robbed of everything they had, even their shoes. Infants were robbed of their swaddling clothes so that they froze to death. All the healthy girls and women, even those 65 years of age, were raped in the train and then robbed.’”

“It is difficult, as a German, to talk about the crimes committed against German women and children after World War II. Of course, it’s not comparable to what happened in the holocaust and during the war, but it is important to know about women’s experiences in war, and that’s what this is about. I remember speaking about the war with my grandmother when I was young. Initially, I asked very critically ‘Did you not know what was going on? Did you not know about the holocaust?’ It wasn’t until I was around sixteen that I asked about her personal war experience. She told me that she was raped by eight Russian soldiers and then simply told to leave. She was very open.”

Photo: Dave Parry

Women, in particular, were victim to the ruthless Soviet Army’s vicious crimes during Germany’s time of retribution, as millions of innocent German girls and women were ravished and raped by Red Army troops. The scale of rape is suggested by the fact that roughly two million German women had illegal abortions every year between 1945 and 1948. The victorious allies introduced a horrifying new era of destruction, starvation, rape and mass killing – one that Time Magazine called “history’s most terrifying peace”. The brutality was not reserved exclusively for Germans; across central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet rule took Polish, Hungarian and Ukrainian lives as well as those of many other nationalities.

“Growing up in Germany I felt such a great sense of shock and guilt, wondering how any of this [the holocaust] could have happened,” says Ildikó. “I learned about the war in school, but women’s war experiences were never taught.” As the title No Woman’s Land suggests, the performance will focus on women and motherhood, which are recurring themes in the work of Zoo Indigo.

“My grandmother told me stories about women who would hide in rooftops to avoid being raped. I heard a story about a very beautiful woman who had to wear layer upon layer of clothing to appear larger, and act crazy to prevent her from being raped again. It was happening on such a large and grotesque scale that women rarely spoke about it. In fact, it wasn’t until generations after the war that it was properly spoken about.”

Ildikó’s grandmother seems to have walked in a ‘very roundabout way’ and Ildikó and her family are still investigating why she took such a route. The long walk, paired with the impractical aspect of carrying the life-size cutouts of Ildikó and Rosie’s children, as well as the summer heat, will make for an arduous journey. But as Rosie explains, “It’s not supposed to be a fun holiday. It is something that’s going to be challenging, draining and will require endurance. But as soon as we think of Ildikó’s grandmother’s experience – not that we could ever imagine what she suffered – it will motivate us to go on.”

Ildikó believes her grandmother would feel honoured if she were alive to see it. But, because of the sensitive nature, would it have reopened wounds, had Ildikó made the journey during her lifetime?

“It’s hard to tell,” Ildikó said, “Perhaps she would even have embraced it.”

Follow their journey online from Sunday 16 August to Friday 4 September.

A work in progress of No Woman’s Land can be seen at Derby Theatre on Sunday 29 November 2015. No Woman’s Land will be premiered at Attenborough Arts Centre on Saturday 23 April 2016.

Zoo Indigo website