From 2005 to 2016 Nube Sandoval and Bernardo Rey direct in Rome, at the Italian Council for Refugees – CIR, the theatrical psychosocial rehabilitation laboratory for refugees who survive the extreme trauma of torture.

 

Torture has as its primary objective the destruction of the identity of its victims, determining a state of psycho-physiological fragmentation. Recovering the fragments to be able to reconstruct one's own history, to integrate the unspeakable, is a complicated process, in which an intermediate space is necessary where a symbolic exchange is possible.

 

The theater laboratory is the space where the psychosocial rehabilitation process begins. It is a collective experience that favors the elaboration of traumatic memories, through an “ecological” and implicit process of reappropriation of one's own history and culture.
Theater as a bridge that unifies the narrative of the human and dehumanizing experience lived by refugees.

The theater laboratory thus becomes the meeting point where everything can be created: relationships, a common language, finding oneself through the recognition of others, a constant questioning about the here and now, an awareness of individual responsibility in collective creative actions, where through singing, the search for organicity in the body and active listening, we reach the creation and realization of a theatrical work that finally gives voice to those who have been silenced and made invisible.

 

June 26 is the International Day of Support for Victims of Torture established by the United Nations. On this date, the CIR organizes an event every year to raise awareness and mobilize civil society on the issue of human rights. During the years that CENIT directed the rehabilitation laboratory experience (2005-2016), the theater was located at the center of this initiative.