DISPLACED by Ground Cover Theatre

“Untethered Women Spinning Into Space“

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 26 January 2018

Natasha Martina’s Displaced is a window into human trauma and it is an ambitious piece. A kaleidoscope of genres and influences, Displaced slips from dance to drama, German to Afghan, and even persona to persona throughout its intense 80 minutes.

Equal parts triumphant, sorrowful, and defiant, Displaced attempts to showcase the separate but intertwined narratives of three immigrant women from different cultures and time periods. Emma Laishram is Dara, an Afghan woman seeking refuge from Taliban rule and the suppressive patriarchy that has shaped her culture. Anna Mazurik is Sofia, a German widow who must make a new life elsewhere in the wake of loss and sacrifice. Jacqueline Block is Mary, an Irish mother who crosses an ocean in search of better lives for herself and her children during the time of the Potato Famine.

But ambitious Displaced may be, it at times tries to do too much. The play’s segues from drama to dance form awkward transitions. Though the dances themselves are smooth and well-choreographed, the shuffle into them becomes a rude ejection from the often tense and weighty narrative.  These disruptions tend to trivialize the issues rather than intensify the gravitas.

But with a story as pressing as this, we are permitted to indulge Displaced its more artistic flourishes.  The moments of melodrama invite us to mourn, celebrate and grieve alongside its cast. Block’s Mary takes her time to fall from grace from being the emblem of maternal love to a caricature of sacrifice. She gives up “good, honest work” as a cleaner for the more lucrative businesses of peddling alcohol and managing a whorehouse – eschewing her identity as upstanding Irish Catholic to become a mother who can provide. Her punishment is thus her redemption. As she is dying in jail, an old friend visits with a letter from her son, thanking her for the money she has sent back and telling her that he and his siblings will see her soon.

Exaggerated and emotional, Displaced is perhaps foremost a call to empathy: to recognise there is a shared humanity in all of us that we must acknowledge and celebrate, and especially now, in a time when there are so many of us, displaced.