The residency in BUDA marks the start of the official rehearsal process, during which they will explore the material gathered through field research and technical experimentation with cassette recorders.

I’m going on a journey and I’m taking myself with me. Most people enjoy travelling, but what does your presence mean in the landscape you’re visiting? What impact does it have on the local population? How do you set out on a journey to the land of your ancestors? This is explored in How do you say “come back”?, a poetic documentary performance about the tourism industry in the Rif region of Morocco. The Rif has become a transit zone between Europe and Africa. On the one hand, the region has been deeply marked by the mass migration to Europe in the 1960s. On the other hand, tourism is now developing there, fuelled in large part by the children of these migrant workers who ‘return’ to discover their roots or to go shopping and visit the many beaches. This performance seeks to explore what we have lost, what we are in the process of losing, and what we are fighting to regain, through the lens of tourism, migration and language. Who has a right to land that ought not to be owned?

Hannah Zaouad (BE)

Hannah Zaouad is a theatre maker, spoken-word artist, dramaturg and documentary filmmaker. They often explore themes of labour, migration, intergenerational memory and urban transformation. They aim for their work to invite people to see connections: between the past and the present, and above all between individual lives and structural systems. In 2025, Hannah Yamin won the Roel Verniers Prize for the pitch of their new theatre project Hoe zeg je “kom terug?” (How do you say “come back?”), which premieres on 20 January at VIERNULVIER, and in August 2026 their debut poetry collection Ewaja will be published by EPO Publishers.