Lara Staal & NTGent - The Blue - Performance 2

The musical location performance De blauw (The Blue) analyzes how the police force operates today. Based on interviews with officers, criminologists, youth workers, and young people from Ghent. Performed by Serdi Faki Alici and Armin Mola. As soon as something ‘goes wrong,’ the police are called in. Officers on the road are confronted with diverse matters: from illegal dumping, to homeless people and noise nuisance, to drug crime. The training to become an officer in Belgium lasts only one year, but once at work, the police encounter the most complex situations. How does a police officer actually determine what is ‘suspicious’ and what is not? As a society, how do you ensure that it is not always the most vulnerable people who are pursued and arrested? And can the police really be there for everyone? It is not for nothing that the police have been under fire regularly in recent years. There are the unclear complaint procedures, officers who rarely appear in court, the cases of ethnic profiling and humiliating treatment,… At the same time, we sometimes seem to forget that the police also consist of just people who have to make ‘split-second’ decisions under great pressure, often with traumatic consequences. Not only for citizens, but also for the officers themselves. De blauw creates a polyphonic and layered portrait of a society in crisis, because we would prefer as few rules as possible, but at the same time, the security discourse is scoring like never before. “More blue on the street!”, is heard from all sides, but is this really what we want? And who are the first to become victims of that? The performance is played outside; from playgrounds to parks, from youth institutions to so-called ‘nuisance locations’ in various neighborhoods in Flanders. The set consists of a small bus that can be unfolded everywhere and thus transforms into a stage.