Arnold & Komarov Wandertheater – Shame on you!

“You can be ashamed for many things. For yourself, your children, your family. For your country, your president. For your actions and inactions.” I. Komarov

Memories of past shame are immense; they are recurring recollections of painful vividness. These recollections are hardly ever shared with other people. The schaemdi.ch project is located in this vacuum. We invite you to share your shame.

First we built the Shame-O-Mat. It offers an opportunity to anonymously share experiences of shame. The result is a collection of oral and written accounts of shameful memories, the Archive Of Shame. This archive is the starting point for the performance Shame on You! – a contemporary travelling theatre.

The Shame-O-Mat gives you an opportunity to get involved in the exploration of a subject for an artistic work. By telling us your experiences, you are researching on a subject together with many others and contribute to a script for the stage. We collect and transcribe the stories, edit them and stage the text. The narrators remain anonymous.

schaemdi.ch is a long-term project and a work in progress. We look forward to be surprised, and we hope for a wealth of stories.

About Shame
Shame can save us from embarrassment. Shame keeps us from total disgrace. It is impeding, it is irritating, it makes us insecure, it can trigger fear, aggression against others and oneself. We treat shame as something private, although its causes are social, religious and moral norms and constraints. Shame has many faces and can be passed on for several generations. It settles in our memory. Years, even decades later, we remember when, where, and why we were ashamed. For example, for your own mother who remains an outsider on visiting days at school, who is incorrectly dressed and unable to talk to other parents. For keeping silent when we get groped on a crowded bus. We are ashamed of ourselves and all the others present who stand idly by and watch the humiliation when the customs officer on the train at the border checks only the papers of PoC’s. It is a paradox that we feel shame as something intimate and personal, although it has been deeply instilled by society, religion, culture and family. Almost everyone is affected by it. The reasons for shame are as complex as our society.

schaemdi.ch is a project by Trixa Arnold and Ilja Komarov. We work with a team in Zurich and with partners in Pakistan, Holland and Russia (they recently had to leave the country). Shame on You! can also be performed in other venues than theaters. We don’t need a stage and whatever technical equipment is not available we will furnish.

We thank for the support: Zurich City Culture, Department of Culture Canton Zurich, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, Georges & Jenny Bloch Stiftung, SIS – Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Culture City Bern, Culture anton Bern – Swisslos, Ceda and Olgica Stichting, WORM Rotterdam.