Strange News in Brussels
Strange News, a multi-media concert merging sound, photographs and personal stories into a powerful experience. The performance has achieved international acclaim and has helped to shed light on the plight of child soldiers, thanks to a unique cooperation between an aid organization and two performing artists.
A strong desire to help, to do something important, to focus on issues we would prefer not to know about. In autumn 2006 this desire brought together Christian Relief Network (CRN), composer Rolf Wallin and theatre director Josse De Pauw. Their goal was to direct focus towards the world’s 250,000 child soldiers.
Rolf Wallin and Josse De Pauw visited CRN’s child soldier program in North Kivu, DR Congo where close to 5000 children now are rehabilitated and reintegrated in their home villages. Together with a reporter and a cameraman from NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) they met former child soldiers, talked to them, and recorded their words. After this visit these two artists produced Strange News a multi-media concert merging sound, photographs and personal stories into a powerful, thought-provoking – and at times painful – experience.
Since then the work has been performed in a number of venues worldwide, and it will be presented at the Theatre National in Brussels on 29 and 30 January. Usually local orchestras or ensembles play at the concerts, and in Brussels the Ictus Ensemble will have this honour.
A young boy stands on a stage, with an orchestra behind him, and relates the story of his life as a child soldier. He tells us about being kidnapped, beaten and abused; about having to kill his own friend; about brutality and violence. But also about hope, about being rescued and about being given the opportunity to start anew.
The story is accompanied by dramatic news footage and by a symphonic work that underscores the boy’s story and reinforces the anxiety, the anger, the hopelessness – and gradually also an element of hope and joy. Finally the boy asks us, "I only want to live a life like yours – is that possible?"
CRN’s cooperation with Strange News in Belgium is an important step in the work to publicise the unacceptable situation of child soldiers more widely. CRN and Strange News share a desire to rouse world opinion, to force people to recognize – and to react against – what is happening to thousands of innocent children.
