FENCES

By Monique Sterker, Luca Maria Mertinat & Luisa Wiegandt

Adaptation

To present the play Fences by August Wilson to a contemporary German audience we decided to “update” the play as a whole.

Instead of a black American family, the plot is shown by a Turkish immigrant family who lives in the district of Neukölln in Berlin in 1995. The family occupies the ground floor of an elder grey-coloured building which also has a small backyard. The audience can recognise other buildings of the same dismal grey colour around the house in the background.

On the left side of the stage you can see a gate which leads to the street and through which the characters appear and leave. In the backyard, people can see (like in the original version of the play) a tree, a clothesline, wooden planks (which will be used to build the fence) and a saw. The facade of the family’s house, the porch with a simple striped awning and a lamp on each side of the door are in the middle of the stage. On the right-hand side of the stage, the audience can look into the house – comparable to a cross-section – and sees the kitchen which is furnished very modestly with old- fashioned cabinets, a stove and a kitchen table.

In our version of the play, the family consists of Ahmet whose original name was Troy, his wife Bahar (Rose), their son Kadir (Cory) and Ahmet’s brother Mohamed (Gabriel).

Ahmet is a Turkish contract worker who came to Germany in the 1960’s. His job is to build streets and he is passionate in football. When he was younger, he was a great and talented football player. Ahmet wears normal clothes like faded light jeans and a checked shirt.

His wife Bahar is dressed in traditional Turkish clothes as well as Mohamed who thinks he is the prophet Mohamed because he had been injured in war but has survived. For this reason, Mohamed always carries his Mizmar with him which is a traditional Turkish instrument. He moved out of the house where Ahmet and his family live in and moved into an apartment that he has rented from Mrs. Schmidt.

Kadir, who is the son of Ahmet and Bahar, wears jeans and t- shirt. He is a very passionate and talented handball player and hopes to become a professional handball player as soon as he finishes school. A professional handball club offers him a contract. In the end, he will go to the Bundeswehr because his father doesn’t allow him to start a career as a professional handball player.

Another character is Savas who is Troy’s son and passionate in music - like Lyons in the original play. In contrast to the original version, he is a rapper and still thinks he will become famous one day. He wears hip hop clothing and a big necklace. Only when he enters the stage slight hip hop music is heard in the background. Savas has a girlfriend whose name is Milana (Bonnie). She works at the laundry of a hotel and wears traditional Turkish clothing.

Takan (Bono) is Ahmet’s friend and a contract worker, too. He has a wife, her name is Hanife (Lucile) and both are dressed in German clothing though Hanife still wears a headscarf.

Ahmet has an affair with Hürriyet (Alberta) and they are having a child together who is named Aishe (Raynell).

The characters, the dialogues and the monologues will not be changed. They are only adapted to the new circumstances: The family speaks with a strong Turkish accent, except the sons Kadir and Savas who have grown up in Germany. Anything referred to African and American history is transformed into Turkish and German historical events so that it entirely fits into our new concept. The word Nigger is left out.

Analysis

Since there is only a small number of African-Americans but a much larger number of Turkish people who are a minority in Germany that has to face racism and discrimination until today, we decided to change the characters from African-Americans into Turks when presenting Fences to a German audience.

In the 1960's, many families from other countries, especially from Turkey, were invited to come to Germany and help to rebuild the country after World War II. Ahmet (Troy) was one of them because as in Wilson's version he left his home to go far away where he was hoping to find a better life. After he went to prison, Ahmet got a job as contract worker where he builds streets as many immigrants do.

On the basis of these genuine historical events and cultural circumstances that took place in Germany, our German contemporary audience can better understand and follow the plot. Nowadays, especially other industrialised nations (like Germany) and younger spectators could only hardly understand the actual issues of discrimination, the fight for equality and acceptance of blacks in American society depicted in the play. This is why we thought of looking for a foreign nationality that has had to struggle with similar problems in Germany so that the audience can identify with the play and its themes, is reminded and gets a better insight into how difficult life was for Turkish families.

These ideas had us to change the names of all characters into typical Turkish and sometimes Arab ones but two of these names carry a special meaning in our version:

Lyons, or as we called him Savas, is named after a well-known German rapper as he himself is one in the play, apart from the fact that he is not famous. Rap music was very popular in Germany during the 90's so we decided to change it from blues to this genre.

Gabriel now is Mohamed because he opens the gates to heaven in the end of the original play, and in Islam, Mohamed is the prophet and messenger of god.

However, Mohamed joined the Turkish army to fight in Gulf War I (1990-1991) where he was badly injured, suffered mental issues and now thinks he is Mohamed, the prophet.

As the play takes place in Germany in 1995, Kadir does not join the Marines but the Bundeswehr and wanted to become a handball player instead of football because handball is a very famous sport in Germany. The only sport that is even more popular is football which Ahmet used to play instead of baseball.

Our final character change was to rename Mrs. Pearl Frau Schmidt which is a typical German name and clearly implies that she is of another nationality than the family and Mohamed in particular.

Next to the communication among the characters and the meaning of their words, we want to set all the different forceful personalities in the centre of attention. That is why we need to emphasise the dialogues and their effects on the plot rather than concentrating on special effects or extraordinary scenery.

Since Fences contains a lot of meaningful moments we would like to leave out any kind of music because it would undermine the importance of the following words, take away the seriousness and distract the audience from listening. The focus has to be on the characters and their conversations, especially in significant moments, for example when Kadir asks Ahmet why he does not like him or when Ahmet tells his wife that he becomes a father.

The only characters who provide some pitiful sounds are Mohamed with his instrument (because it would not make any sense if people would not hear any tones though he has his Mizmar with him all the time) and Savas with hip-hop sounds when he enters the stage.

In other moments, we rather want to use different light intensities in order to underline the action. Many important scenes take place in the evening: The reason is Ahmet’s return from work, and since he is the main character who appears in almost every scene, we think of the following:

The audience looks at the house and the yard of the family. The respective person comes through the gate (leading to the street) into the yard, and the action can begin. In the background, people can see the sky turning into a soft gloom and the pleasant sound of chirping crickets predict the end of the day. Besides, it represents a clear contrast to the action on stage which is to be seen as emphasis again: A peaceful surrounding faces a conflict or meaningful moment.

The character(s) on stage are highlighted with two spotlights, so that the audience knows that something will happen.

The particularity in our version of the play is that every scene appears as natural and modest as possible in order to emphasise the action, the conversations and the strong characters. The applied twilight around the stage perfectly enables us this idea.