The issue of refugee identity is the starting point of Senka Bulić’s directorial concept of Lampedusa Beach, her theatre production based on the text by Italian author Lina Prosa. In short, it is a story about a boat crammed with African refugees sinking in the strait in front of the island of Lampedusa. While most are drowning and disappearing in silence, a young woman, Shauba, manages to hold on to a pair of sunglasses as to a buoy, and in a long, poetic monologue utter her odyssey: the hopes, preparation, journey, and death. Before she sinks to the bottom of the sea, she sums up the courage to call out European and African leaders and draw their attention to the tragedy she embodies. During that shipwreck, Shauba will talk about herself without being broken by the events, namely the racism, sexism, or another form of discrimination she experiences on her journey. She will take the word and in Senka Bulić’s theatre production she will articulate a few of the basic issues. Shauba is African, therefore a black woman. In our modern societies, race has become a taboo term, as if the mere mentioning of race contains the thought of racism, and as if by abolishing the word “race” the possibility of a racist act, word or opinion is also abolished.

Zlatko Wurzberg