In the pre-united sorry robert made together with the dutch director Lidy Six a ritual to connect people from different cultures within one city. It was an approach to meet each other in an intymate way, and an opportunity to listen to the mothertongue of other people. The ritual is offered by 20 by 25 storytellers, some volunteerts who bring the audience to bed and serve them tea and a veejay Roberta Marques and a deejay Cassie6 who make a loungy atmosphere before and after the meeting. The ritual already has taken place in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Maastricht, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Munich, Vienna, New York.

Fragment of a press release PS122/New York where the ritual was organized.This one-of-a-kind, interactive live art installation (perhaps best described as a live performance ritual) turns the Bible’s version of the Tower of Babel on its ear, so to speak. Six and Steijn pair twenty-five audience members with twenty-five storytellers from around the world who then share stories – from personal histories and secrets to myths and folktales (and maybe even a joke or two) – in their native tongues. This sea of language is unleashed after each audience member has been personally welcomed with some tea and tucked into one of twenty-five individual beds (complete with nightstands) in the upstairs theatre. Meanwhile, live VJ Roberta Marques and live DJ Cassie 6 spin and mix together visual and acoustic cues to enhance this relaxing and embracing, rather dreamlike, atmosphere. This daring and playful experiment in communication is designed to bypass language and overcome barriers of “us and them” while inventing a new vocabulary for understanding in real time.

At the same time, Tower of Babel puts a human face – 25 to be exact – to issues of globalization and immigration and makes it clear that these are in fact everyone’s issues. It brings these topics home in an even more local and immediate fashion by recasting in each city where it is performed. New York City, of course, results in a robust combination of various languages, such as Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Yiddish, Zulu; and nationalities including Romanian, Senegalese, Swiss, South African, and Venezuelan. Six and Steijn also take special care to represent a multitude of professions and ages – the NYC cast includes graduate students, translators, tutors, writers, dancers, not to mention a spiritual healer, physical therapist, and a grandmother aged 78. Some were born here, some have immigrated here, others are here temporarily working for the U.N. or studying abroad. All will tell a story. And somehow, as Six and Steijn relate from their previous experiences in mounting the show, all will be understood.