2025 Ubu Award for Best Production, *A Place of Safety* is the story of an encounter between a theater company and a group of people who have decided to dedicate part of their lives to sea rescue, but it is also an intimate exploration of what Europe would like to be, what it is not, and what it could become.
A Place of Safety
A Journey Through the Central Mediterranean
Kepler-452
© Luca Del Pia
1 hour 50 minutes
!
In Italian, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with Italian subtitles.
A Place of Safety
A Journey Through the Central Mediterranean
Kepler-452
© Luca Del Pia
1 hour 50 minutes
!
In Italian, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, with Italian subtitles.
The Kepler-452 group is boarding a search-and-rescue vessel in the central Mediterranean, the Sea-Watch 5. They aren’t quite sure what they’re looking for; they only know that they’ve been hearing about what’s happening just a few kilometers off the Italian coast for a long time, and perhaps the time has come to go and see for themselves what’s happening along the world’s deadliest migration route. During this mission, they rescue 156 people, who will be disembarked at a “place of safety,” a safe port in Italy.
This journey gives rise to a series of thoughts, questions, and concerns, as well as encounters with rescuers from various NGOs operating in the Mediterranean—in addition to Sea-Watch itself, there are also crew members from Life Support, Emergency’s search-and-rescue vessel— some of whom will recount on stage what they witnessed happening just a few kilometers off the Italian coast.
The testimonies gathered—covering the last ten years of search and rescue in the Mediterranean Sea—become, within the play’s structure, the stages of a mission: from the fears before departure to the motivations driving people to set sail, what happens as they approach the area of operations, the rescue itself, and finally the return journey. Amid the characters’ narratives, a question arises in the directors’ minds: “How should this story be told?”
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