LONDON- We met Valentina Zagaria, writer and director of the devised piece “Miraculi” at the end of the last performance in London, on Saturday 9th August, at Tristan Bates Theatre. “Miraculi” has been represented by Théâtre Senza as part of the 2014 Camden Fringe Festival at the TBT.
Valentina is a really nice girl, with her fine features and her sunny smile communicates a lots of feelings without the need for words. Looking at her you could never imagine that such a energy is contained in its thinness.
We asked her to talk about her experience with theatre and, particularly, with the Southernmost European island of Lampedusa.
“Théâtre Senza – she kindly explained- was born as a company by curiosity and the desire of our group to go to Lampedusa to collect our impressions of the place and its history, and the life stories of the people who live there and who goes there, and then tell them in a show. We started working together last year, and in September 2013 we did a one-month residency at Lampedusa. We followed all the training in the school of theater Jacques Lecoq in Paris (an international school of physical theater and creation). Our company is based in Paris, but we would like to bring our work around Europe and North Africa. Miraculi is our first piece. We work in a collaborative manner, the actors are also co-creators of the show, and I often write directly to it based on improvisations.”
Then, we asked “And, Valentina, what about your company of actors?”
“In the company we all have different nationalities and backgrounds. I studied social anthropology at Cambridge University before doing a Masters at the London School of Economics (LSE) in Law and Anthropology, during which I started to do research in Lampedusa, in the summer of 2011. In October I will attend a PhD in anthropology at the LSE and always on the links that are created in the opposite shores of the Mediterranean Sea because of the people disappeared on their way to Europe. What I want to study is to understand how these links complicate the relationship and understanding that people have of their state and its laws .
We ourselves are an international theatre troupe, including members from Finland, France, Italy, Scotland, Switzerland and Turkey. Here are the names and nationalities of the other members of the company:
Read Dylan – Scottish and French
Shona Cowie – Scottish
Paula Laurila – Finnish
Elodie Monteau – French
Doğa Nalbantoglu – Turkish”
In addition, we inquired about the last meaning of her devised piece “Miraculi” and what she wanted to show. “There are so many stories that intersect each other.- she replied – We wanted to give a sketch of the life of every day in Lampedusa. The show begins with a sub that brings to the surface the body of a young woman, and at the same time the other two young women talking on the phone with their mothers. Both are about to leave for Lampedusa, in a plane, the other in a boat, one from Milan, the other from Zuwarah (Libya). During the show we will follow the story of Claudia, who arrived in Lampedusa and begins to work with the Coast Guard, and Selam, which we will see living in the hold of the boat, but that will not arrive in Lampedusa. “
“There are also the fishermen with their dilemmas about what to do with a sea that offers no more to earn and tourists on the other hand. Tourists are who often have to choose whether or not to rescue at sea, whether to save lives but risk losing their fishing licenses. There are members of the various military army and police, since the island is very militarized. In our point of view it was important to show that the border is a militarized place of Europe And then we represente the children, tourists, old ladies, the married life of Maria and Salvatore, politicians and journalists who always speak of Lampedusa, creating the “emergency” and Salvatore who goes to the cemetery where so many people are buried without a name found in the sea. And, finally, the doctor of the clinic who visit patients of the island, which is also involved in inspections of dead bodies of people who died on route from Libya or Tunisia to Lampedusa.”
Thus, “Miraculi” shows the real life on the island of Lampedusa: not only of tourists that every summer crowd the suggestive bays of the island, but also the real file of the inhabitants, every day engaged to face up to a very difficult situation. In my opinion (and by the applause received I could say that this is a shared opinion) Valentina Zagaria and her theatre troupe “Theatre Senza” succeeded in it.