Who We Are is a dance–theatre performance blending puppetry, movement, dance and multilingual song, inspired by the lived experiences of young people in exile.
On stage, five young artists, originally from Sub-Saharan Africa and Palestine, share fragments of their journeys as asylum seekers in Belgium.
They do not tell their stories through testimony alone, but through bodies, objects, shadows and puppets — allowing emotions to surface where words are not enough.
The puppets, mostly made of paper and created together with the performers, represent real people.
They move, dance, sing, grow and shrink throughout the performance, reflecting how migrants are so often reduced to files, numbers or labels — and how their dignity reappears the moment we truly listen.
Between poetry and raw reality, Who We Are invites the audience into an intimate encounter:
an encounter with stories rarely heard, with humour and pain, fragility and resilience, fear and hope.
Rather than offering answers, the performance opens a space for reflection:
Who are these people we speak about so often, yet listen to so little?
What happens when we meet them not as “migrants”, but as human beings?
And what kind of society could we imagine, together, if we chose empathy over distance?
