Lecture: 'Us and Them'

Daria Bukvić interviewed by Wieke ten Cate

The first theatre play that Daria Bukvić directed was her graduation project From Russia with love in 2013. Together with Vanja Rukavina, Bukvić created a play where four Dutch and four Russian youngsters meet on the stage floor. Confronted with themselves, each other and all the cultural clichés that they carry with them led to a physical, outgoing and humorous show.

In December 2015 her new show Nobody Home premiered at the Theatre Company in Amsterdam. In the show three actors (Vanja Rukavina, Majd Mardo and Saman Amini) look back at their past as refugees and tell their stories about their flight experiences and how they grew up in the Netherlands.

Bukvić and the actors were all born in the same year, 1989. As a kid they fled from their home country – Iran, Syria and Bosnia – and then started around the same time at the Maastricht Theatre Academy. These special circumstances almost naturally led to a performance. Nobody Home is a funny and poignant coming of age story about three young people, a reflection on how the treatment of refugees in the Netherlands has changed over the years, and a passionate plea for humanity. The play is a touching, critical and humorous portrait of a young generation in a country where the refugee policy changed drastically in the last twenty years. The dynamics between _us_and _them _is a constant and important issue in daily life. The production was selected for the Dutch Theatre Festival in 2015 and was among the eleven best performances of the season 2014–2015.

Bio - Daria Bukvić’s (Tuzla, 1989) mother is a Bosnian Muslim woman and her father a Catholic Croat. Because of the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war Daria fled with her mother to the Netherlands in 1992. They have spent two years in a refugee centre before they got a permanent residency. Bukvić grew up in a village in Limburg, where she soon discovered her love for the theatre. At 17, she applied for the directing programme of the Theatre Academy in Maastricht where she obtained her diploma in 2011. Since then Bukvić directed all kind of theatre plays for Frascati Productions, Parade festival, Hofplein Rotterdam, Toneelschuur Producties, and many more.

Students react to the topic of Daria Bukvic's lecture 'Us and Them'

Installation created by Fine Arts students Daniele Formica & Suyoung Yang:
We created a multicultural buffet combining ingredients from our nationalities.