Project 2006: political drama
Colin Murphy sees a new young company tackle a big theme and just about pull it off, in displace
Taxi driver: "Project Arts Centre? You going to a play? What is it?" Reporter: "Some new play, about migrants."
Taxi driver: "About how to get rid of them?"
Laughter.
displace is a new play by a young Dublin company ensemble, running at Project until 14 January. It is messy, stilted at times, very worthy and – as a piece of observation – not entirely accurate.
Doesn't matter. It's also energetic, agreeably whimsical, momentarily beautiful and, if not precise about the scenes it's documenting, it is nonetheless astute about the overall scenario. And at 40 minutes, it's difficult to disagree with this young company's enthusiasm for invention and originality – they may not get it quite right, but the short time in their company is well-spent.
The play is devised by the company in three languages (English, Chinese and, I think, Bosnian), and traces the fates of immigrants from China and from Sarajevo in Ireland through episodic scenes and occasionally abstract vignettes. A young woman arrives from Sarajevo with no English and finds herself in an awful flat on the North Circular Road (at €500 per month). A Chinese man spends days trying to get his application for rent allowance together, being sent, with satirical exaggeration, all over the city to various offices and departments for different stamps. The company talk, act, sing and dance their way through the short scenes, in an awkward mix of styles that looks more like an excuse to experiment in rehearsal than a coherent approach to devising a play. Yet they are gently innovative, and create some compelling moments of wry humour, abstract movement and simple drama.
With The System garnering good reviews upstairs at the Project (also running till Saturday 14 January; I hadn't seen it at time of going to print), it's been an auspicious start to 2006 for Project, possibly the most consistently interesting venue of last year.
Irish companies are increasingly tackling issues of both the changing local socio-politics of migration, and of geopolitics – often awkwardly, sometimes crudely, sometimes shoehorning right-on politics into an unreceptive dramatic structure.
But it's good to see the arguments happening on the stage, and it's good for this new company (who appear to call themselves Anonymous) that it hasn't fallen into those traps.
The one great danger, though – which displace does fall into – is predictability. When you go to see a piece of theatre in Dublin that's talking about asylum, or immigration, or war (in Iraq or "on terror"), you know what it's going to be saying. And you probably agree with it. That may be nice for political solidarity, and for a cosy discussion afterwards, but it's not good for drama, and it's no use for any kind of politics of theatre that sees theatre as challenging whatever consensus and also talking to a wider audience, not just People Like Us. displace hints at a greater complexity to the issue of migration in portraying some of the Irish characters as stuck in dead-end, monotonous jobs, practically dehumanised by the nature of their institutional contact with other humans – processing rent-allowance forms, or stamping passports, but the play ultimately isn't about this, and leaves them underdeveloped. Future plays on migration will be stronger when they allow for genuine conflict between credible, and empathetic, characters who have views and politics that the liberal arts community doesn't like.
?More displace plays at the Project Arts Centre until 14 January. www.project.ie, 01 881 9613