Land aller Kinder (Nation of All Children)

Please explain borders!, eleven-year-old performer Zümra demands – while shortly afterwards answering herself, with the aid of Kully, the main protagonist, also of the same age, of the novel “Child of All Nations”.

Borders are invisible. They are something that unfolds between officers on a train.

But how would you prove you crossed the border if it is invisible?, Rokia (11) asks, debunking the absurdity in wanting to describe something that is barely explicable.

Berlin-based theatre group andcompany&Co. stages a “grown-up play for children” aged 10 and up – inspired by a novel by author Irmgard Keun, who had to flee the Nazis herself. Kully’s story is amalgamated into the personal stories of the fellow players, like author and performer Luna Ali, who escaped from Syria with her family when she was a child, and German Iranian Damon Taleghani, whose parents came to Germany from Iran. Thus, a direct, humorous and, most of all, timeless description of German exile emerges in which urgent questions for flight, migration and the questions for human rights are negotiated in a manner that is appropriate for children: Who vouches for those for whom nobody can vouch? What does it mean to be a child of all nations and, therefore, of no nation at all? Be there when more and more of those words come under the children’s scrutiny, when the words are stood on their heads, renegotiated, until the grown-ups on stage are all out of air, erm, words, while the visa that is supposed to bring everyone into a new country further expires, until it is expired altogether. Is this already the nation of all children, or just another stopover? And who actually ordered this dentist, anyway?