Ramba Zamba: The Theater Troupe

The Ramba Zamba Theater Company in Berlin

The Third Reich and the Mentally Disabled

No one seems to know how many mentally retarded people were murdered in Europe by the Germans. Historians frequently write that 200,000 people were killed in the euthanasia program, but that number includes the physically disabled, psychotics, and people with dementia. There is still no authorative history of “the feeble-minded” in the Nazi era.

So it is hardly surprising that even most Germans have only a vague idea of what happened to retarded citizens under the Nazis. There are a number of things about this sordid story, however, that deserve to be widely known. First, that support for euthanizing mentally disabled people was an international phenomenon. There was vigorous support for euthanasia in the United States, England, and elsewhere in Europe around the First World War. Secondly, that in Germany even many advocates for the retarded accepted the idea that some lives were “not worth living” and that individuals who manifested no “will to live” should be killed. The debate in Germany prior to the Nazi seizure of power concerned not whether there should be euthanasia, but where to draw the line, i.e. who exactly should be killed. German advocates for the retarded courageously defended the rights of many or even most mentally disabled citizens, but they conceded the point that state-sponsored killing was not an inherently bad idea.

Finally, there was the role of parents. A remarkable survey conducted in the early 1920’s by the director of a German asylum for the retarded found that a clear majority of his patients’ fathers approved hypothetically of the “painless shortening” of their children’s lives. (The mothers were asked only indirectly.) Many parents stated that the best thing might be if their children were euthanized without their knowledge and consent. To what extent did these parents later acquiesce in the Nazis’ actual program of mass murder? Really, we don’t know. There are plenty of examples of protest against the Nazis’ euthanasia campaign, but we lack a broader picture of how German families related to their mentally disabled members and how their attitudes changed over time.

Overall, the historical literature is mostly silent about the lives of the mentally disabled and their place in German society.

Ramba Zamba

This silence is the context for the Ramba Zamba theater company in Berlin. Ramba Zamba is a German slang term for raucousnous, chaos, and madness. Ramba Zamba might offer the best possible start for what the Germans call Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung – working through the legacy of the past.

The theater troupe is made up of actors with mental disabilities. But it’s not what you think. They are not doing feel-good theater. It’s not some mawkish, politically correct variety show in which socially underprivileged amateurs plead for public affirmation by pretending to be “real actors.” It’s not about self-expression for the sake of self-expression.

Ramba Zamba does real theater.

Does that mean it’s just as good as “normal theater?” Not if by “normal” we mean a reassuringly familiar story presented by actors who look and sound like they just came off the set of a network sitcom. Ramba Zamba is avante garde, which means that it’s constantly breaking the rules about how to entertain. They’re not afraid to make the audience squirm or laugh at things that aren’t supposed to be funny, or even force the audience to puzzle about what's going on on stage. If you are receptive to them, Ramba Zamba destroys the very idea that there is such a thing as “normal” theater and “normal” actors.

In conventional theater, the audience is supposed to lose itself in the play. You forget that you are at the theater or having a night on the town. You forget that actor X is really too old or too young for the part, or that he’s a black man playing an Elizabethan courtier or a white man playing an African soldier. At Ramba Zamba, however, you rarely forget that the actors are mentally disabled. The company doesn't want you to just sit back and be entertained. They challenge the audience with uncomfortable images and ideas.

Medea by Ramba Zamba

Recently I saw their production of Medea. That's Medea by Euripides, the one I was supposed to read in college.

The play unfolds on a largely bare, open stage in a small, modest theater. Upstage there is a wall of corrugated metal with one opening, a sliding door 6 feet in the air on a small, elevated platform. There are no stairs to the platform, which is surrounded by a metal railing.

Slowly the stage fills up with men and women dressed as vagabonds. They are all shapes and sizes, but mostly heavy set and relatively small. A few of the actors are recognizably down-syndrome. Their clothes are ratty, patched together outfits. Some carry beat up suitcases or backpacks. They shuffle upstage and look longingly at the door above them.

Finally one actor clambers up the wall and onto the platform. He pulls open the sliding door and disappears inside. The crowd murmurs. He returns shortly and addresses them.

The young man, who has down's syndrome, is difficult to understand, though his stage presence is remarkable. He is confident, direct, in control, utterly in character. You crane your neck and concentrate hard to understand him, but strangely the challenge doesn’t bother you. You concentrate, listen, adapt to his cadences and pronounciations.

The young man tells the assembled crowd what he learned from behind the wall. Corinth is a beautiful city. There is bountiful food, lovely houses and streets. There are lovely theaters and a ready audience.

The vagabonds are excited. It turns out they are travelling actors and now, finally, they can imagine settling down and performing on a real stage, with real lights, stage hands, etc.

The young man on the platform interrupts to remind them about the required documents. With wonderful comic timing, he goes through the list of forms that will need to be filled out, dropping sheets of paper to the crowd as he enumerates them. You’ll just need to submit your:

• residency registration
• Application for asylum
• Application for permission to work
• Proof of Driver’s license
• Proof of graduation from an accredited high school
  
• etc. etc. etc.

The actors scramble for the sheets of paper and groan collectively as they realize that they'll never in fact be able to enter the city through the legitimate channels. A mysterious blind man advises them that they might get into the city if they performed a play here and now, preferably a play with blood and guts and lots of royalty. He suggests they perform Medea. The actors have never heard of the play, but they like the idea of a little sex and gore and a few kings.

They create a stage by brushing together a great circle of dirt. That's where the action will play. They then begin arguing with each other over who will play the leading roles. Three women vie for the part of Medea. One of them notes apologetically that she is fat, but she has just lost weight and will be losing more. Another woman argues that Medea herself was obviously quite plump, and therefore SHE should get the part, since she is plenty fat and plans to stay that way. "But I'm STILL fatter than you," says the first woman. "I should be Medea." The fight continues until it is decided that all three women will play Medea. Three men emerge to play the part of Jason, and this is how the play proceeds, with three different couples acting out the story in different scenes.

The couples are very different from each other. One pair, severely retarded, performs the story of Medea and Jason in an extremely simple, slow-moving, yet lyrical fashion. We see them in love. We see tensions brewing. The simplicity of their gestures and the relative lack of language makes the story all the more universal. It's like a slow dance.

The second couple is far more verbal and physical. There's a kind of explosiveness to Jason that feels like pent up frustration, eagerness to get away to join some other world. With the third couple, Jason is a smooth charmer, while Medea is messy, unhappy, catatonic. Jason is afflicted by the dirt at home (a humorous point since of course the stage consists only of dirt and Jason is wearing a Don Johnson-esque white suit) and medea's failure to maintain order. "Why can't you be normal?!" he yells at her, frustrated.

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