Students and employees sometimes feel excluded or discriminated, whereas the one who caused this might not even be aware of it. A committee at the Geo-Faculty drew attention to this situation with interactive theater.
”Zlatan is not really a typical Swedish name”, head-librarian Dan says to his colleague Emil. Soon, the spectator discovers that Dan is not very fond of immigrants: he is a blunt racist. One minute later, exchange student Emine, wearing a headscarf, runs into the library, completely upset. She is in desperate need of a reference book, but her library card is not functioning. A situation that is bound to explode, which is exactly what happens – much to the amusement of the audience.
This is only one of three scenes that theater group Nya Klassiska Teatern/PUMAN brings to the stage. In another scene, a bossy chef congratulates one of the employees with her birthday, but does this in such a way that the woman only feels insulted.
”Of course, the situations are extreme”, PhD-student Florian Sallaba admits. He is part of the Gender & Equality Committee of the Departments of Physical Geography and of Geology that organized this afternoon.
”But this makes it easier for the audience to notice what goes wrong.” He knows from experience that one sometimes is not aware of making someone else feel uncomfortable.
”Whenever housemates in my student house hadn’t done their dishes, I would just tell them when others were present. In some cultures, that can feel like loosing your face; I had better told them privately.”
Later, all situations are replayed, but now the audience can intervene. If anyone thinks that the characters make a mistake, they should call ‘stop’ and suggest a change.
Many are actively participating, but not all suggestions work: Dan cannot just become less of a racist. The idea to have Emil stand up to his colleague, however, improves the situation. When Emine is told to change her behavior by entering the library a bit more silently and approaching the librarians with more politeness, the scene evolves peacefully – for at least a few minutes…
IT-technician Ricardo Guillén considered the afternoon ”fun”. Originally coming from Central-America, he has experienced discrimination, sometimes expressed by such small things as body language.
”Once I was stopped by the police for driving without a light and they said very clearly that ‘here in Sweden’ we do bike with lights. The meta-message was: you are not from here. I know more examples of these very subtle remarks. They are actually worse than blunt racism, because the latter is just not acceptable.”’
Does Ricardo think that initiatives like these can help to solve this issue? With some doubt:
”I hope so. It is a structural thing, after all.”
