Vice Chancellor @marietwestermann of NYU Abu Dhabi opens the 11th season of NYU Abu Dhabi Institute introducing a talk by Caroline Brothers, author of Hinterland, the source of The Arts Center’s presentation of @voxmotus’ Flight, opening later this week. 
Moderator Piia Mustamaki opens by asking about @CaroBrothers’ original work as a journalist. She first focused on the migration journeys of refugees from Africa. She met a 17-year-old Afghan boy and started learning about their experiences in more detail.
While in Calais, she met even younger boys, 12 years old and younger. She started to meet more and more migrant kids, and realized there were important stories which weren’t known and weren’t being told. “Making an invisible phenomenon visible.”
Some of her early stories made it to the cover of the @nytimes. It raised awareness and concerns and donations started flowing to small NGO’s. “Journalism can have impact.”
Caroline Brothers also has a PhD in History, and wrote in War and Photography. She is “drawn to seemingly insoluble situations.” As a journalist, “you’re looking for academic research” but there was a need for more.
“Training in history makes you really aware of your sources” - @CaroBrothers talked about being wary of the agendas of one’s sources.
Because the journalistic context was so politicized “there was so much shouting” but the struggle to survive is so personal, @CaroBrothers decided to pursue telling these stories as a novel because “the subject wasn’t getting a fair hearing in journalism.” #VoxMotus #Flight
The main characters in Hinterland are composites, first @CaroBrothers created short stories, originally with one character. “But he needed someone to talk to” so a brother and a friend were added.
“How should I make a future? How should a make a life?” Questions from a 14-year-old that inspired @CaroBrothers to write Hinterland.
“You’re protecting your characters...you had to put them at risk.” - advice that @CaroBrothers was given which helped her overcome her own fears about depicting some of the most horrific experiences of young migrants.
Question as to why the book focuses only on boys. Because she mostly met boys - families are aware that girls are too at risk for trafficking so they aren’t sent out into the world in similar ways. It’s considered too dangerous.
Question re @CaroBrothers and her choice as a Western woman writing about two young Afghan boys. It was urgent because no one else was telling the stories. And she was extremely conscientious about research and fact checking her depiction. Wanted to do best she could by the kids.
With fiction based on true life stories, she didn’t feel like she had the same kind of license other novelists might have.
“Do you consider it political fiction?” Asks Piia Mustamaki. “I wasn’t trying to promote a political stance. I was trying to tell a human story.” But she acknowledges that all art can be political
“I wanted people to get over their fear and to know what these people had gone through” - @CaroBrothers. The goal was to open a quiet space for understanding one of the defining issues of our time. #Hinterland #VoxMotus #Flight
How did Hinterland become a theater piece? @voxmotus found the imagery very rich, and was able to turn several pages of the book into a single image in #Flight
What role did @CaroBrothers play in the adaptation? @voxmotus came to visit her and won her trust. Unlike with cinema, she felt thy their interest in the work was serious and had a compatible worldview.
As the author, @CaroBrothers had the right to review, but she also trusted @voxmotus’ expertise in how theater needs to work. But they could talk back and forth about what changes couldn’t be made in order for it to remain true. #VoxMotusFlight
To see people come out of the performance of Flight you get different responses depending on whether or not they read Hinterland. People come out quite emotional and often come out resolved to do something.
Why the title change? There was a debate about Hinterland vs Flight. @CaroBrothers liked the evocative quality of Hinterland and what unknown is outside in the outskirts. A private world.
“Storytelling for a Jaded World” was the title of tonight’s @NYUADInstitute talk. Why? @CaroBrothers wanted her story to break through all the noise and political arguments. When Flight was developed, the refugee crisis had gotten even larger.
Vox Motus came up with something that was so radically different. They came up with a new solution to a major problem.
Audience question: “what happened to the boys @CaroBrothers met and based the characters on? What kind of input did the subjects or other Afghan refugees have in the adaptation?” It was actually dangerous for the boys to maintain contact.
There was so much passage, it’s hard to keep track of the subjects, but she had to be very careful to not get the boys into trouble.
This book is not about Afghanistan. It’s about us, the receptor countries. @CaroBrothers #Hinterland.
Compared to journalism, writing a novel was a relief. Allows less structure, space to expand into an emotional world. It also takes place over time, which makes it less intense than the experience of a reader who absorbs in a shorter period.
One point @CaroBrothers wanted to make in Hinterland was how easily the line from smuggling can transform into trafficking.
Btw, tonight’s fantastic moderator is Piia Mustamaki @1001Worlds
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