Abstract:

How do we comprehend the scale of contemporary Syrian child displacement, much less represent it theatrically—and ethically? In this essay, I explore how the Good Chance Theatre has continued to try, through the evolving figure of Little Amal, an unaccompanied Syrian girl who appears in two transnational performances, The Jungle (2017) and The Walk (2021). Drawing on interviews with directors, actors, and puppeteers, I argue that both productions renegotiate the adoptive gaze Western European and North American audiences usually impose upon Syrian refugee children. The eight locally cast child actors that played Little Amal across The Jungle’s original tour produced a Brechtian doubling of performances that complicated violent spectatorial relations, while The Walk’s twelve-foot-tall puppet of Little Amal resists adoptive logics’ reliance on humanitarian tropes of liminality and minority.

Complicating hegemonic binaries of insider/outsider, seeing/being seen, and even life/death, The Jungle and The Walk invite Euro-American onlookers to reconsider their relation to the refugee ‘crisis,’ undercut the individual logic of adoption, and call for a collective response. Little Amal’s (not so) minor encounters, I find, lay bare the inherent theatricality of the current refugee rights paradigm as applied to displaced peoples of all ages. Reclaiming the figurative and embodied potential of the Syrian child refugee, Amal reveals mass displacement to be a shared human phenomenon: already lived by so many, and looming for all.

摘要：

我们如何理解当代叙利亚儿童流离失所的规模，更不用说以戏剧和道德的方式表现它了？在这篇文章中，我将探讨好机会剧院如何继续尝试，通过小阿迈勒这个无人陪伴的叙利亚女孩不断发展的形象，她出现在两场跨国演出《丛林》（2017 年）和《行走》（2021 年）中。根据对导演、演员和木偶师的采访，我认为这两部作品都重新调整了西欧和北美观众通常强加给叙利亚难民儿童的收养目光。在《The Jungle 》最初的巡演中，八名当地儿童演员扮演小阿迈勒，演出了布莱希特式的双重表演，使暴力观众关系变得复杂，而《The Walk》的十二英尺高的小阿迈勒木偶抵制了收养逻辑对人道主义的依赖。限制性和少数派的比喻。

《丛林》和《行走》将内部/外部、看见/被看见、甚至生/死的霸权二元关系变得复杂化，邀请欧美旁观者重新考虑他们与难民“危机”的关系，削弱了收养的个人逻辑，并呼吁集体回应。我发现，小阿迈勒的（不那么）小遭遇暴露了当前适用于所有年龄段流离失所者的难民权利范式固有的戏剧性。阿迈勒重新展现了叙利亚儿童难民的象征性和具体化潜力，揭示了大规模流离失所是人类共同的现象：许多人已经经历过这种情况，而且所有人都面临着这种情况。