Us & Them – a play by David Campton performed by the advanced course of English grade 11
Walls.
Walls have been dividing people from the beginning of existence. They keep borders and keep peace. But for how long? Not long. Situations like those, with walls between people all end the same. Constant anxiety, isolation and fear of the other side cumulate over time and it escalates.
To record is my job, to record and only record. No more, no less. I’ve been here. All the time. Recording.
This time, I really have thought it was different. Every single time I have hope. Hope that somebody will make it and not build that goddamn wall. But every single time, they build the wall. In hope that the wall will fix all their anxiety, envy and greed. They hope for protection by separation. Not knowing they’re restricting their own freedom and writing their own nemesis. How can all of them make the same mistake all over again?
Yet, I can’t interfere. My job is to record and only record, of course, there’s always the temptation to shout “stop”. But I can’t. Just like them, I can only hope everything will go well this time.
They fight. They always end up fighting. And every single battle ends the same way. They fight until no one is left, until they realise their own mistakes.
It’s all just history. I’ve recorded it. I’ve kept the record hoping somebody will learn from it. Someday, someone will.
Us & Them – a Theatre Play Developed by the English Advanced Course, 11th grade
Borders. Keeping us apart. Dividing groups that are said to be too different to co-exist. But are they really? Don't they seem to be just the same concerning the basics?
The world we wake up to everyday is full of borders. May they be fences, walls or locked doors, they have many faces. But good walls make good neighbours and good neighbours make good walls, right?
No.
We separate ourselves way too willingly. We all are responsible that, instead of creating one big community, our world consists of US&THEM.
In our English advanced course we worked on a theatre play which had this title in
which Party A and Party B, who are no more defined and left as kind of general characters that can be transferred onto any situation that might be alike, find themselves wanting to settle down on the same stretch of land.
Dividing that land seems simple and does not create any problems at first. But how to keep the animals from straying over? They don't know their world is all of the sudden limited to one side. What seems to be needed are borders. String becomes fence, fence becomes a wall.
Now the animals are safe but people are not made for living behind walls.
Not seeing what the others are doing, not knowing what‘s going on on the other side plants doubts and encourages overthinking. Maybe the others are plotting against us? Maybe they want to attack? How do we know that we are safe?
We don't, so the guessing continues, escalating in the minds of all involved until the situation itself explodes.
The wall gets destroyed the people die, killing each other, convinced it's the right thing to do. Convinced the other group is an enemy and has to be eliminated. They are too different after all, aren't they?
But I and hopefully we all know that they weren't. We know that they're the same, just paranoid. So let's learn to live together, let's learn to compromise so that maybe someday this awful pattern stops repeating itself.
