| Tena Stivicic - Interview - Gloves off in drama about invisible workforce |
| That she calls her play Invisible speaks volumes SCENES filled with the unseen play out in Invisible, a drama about those characters in society so 'minor' they don't even get noticed.
Anton is forced to leave his homeland and is now 16 storeys above a foreign city cleaning windows. Felix falls for a Lara, a migrant he meets in a nightclub, who doesn't fit the menial job she happens to do. "It is about the feeling of being invisible in a different culture," says author Tena Stivicic, "of not having the opportunity to engage with life. And in a more subtle way there are a lot of people who are British but still feel they do not belong, who feel disempowered and not part of the culture either." There is an element of personal experience here. Tena is originally from Croatia and although she chose, rather than was forced, to leave her homeland and come to Britain, she knows something of those feelings of not belonging. "So many people move around the world for economic reasons," she says. "Many people from Western European countries such as Britain move around the world for better jobs and better lives. Sometimes we forget that the globalisation that makes our lifestyles possible is also connected to the migration of people from poorer countries to wealthier ones like Britain. When those two worlds which are usually invisible collide, dramatic things happen." Invisible is at the Drum, Theatre Royal Plymouth from Tuesday to Saturday next week, as part of a national tour of port cities, places which typically have large migrant populations. The play is presented by Transport's. Their artistic director, and Complicite associate, Douglas Rintoul is directing and Liam Bergin, who is best known for his role as Danny Mitchell in EastEnders, is in the cast. While weighty issues are tackled, there is light among the darkness, Tena promises. "I don't like to pigeon hole plays in categories because life is not like that," she explains. "Even in tragic incidents people find humour and there is a lot of humour in the migrant experience." Tena, already an established playwright in Croatia, came to Britain because she felt her work would benefit from more training and from immersion in the Anglo Saxon tradition of theatre. She completed an MA at Goldsmiths College in London "and somehow found myself still here eight years later". "My experience has sensitised me to the experience of those who have been migrants without choice. It opens up an area of emotions that are similar but not as intense." Her greatest trial was British bureaucracy. "I was always legal with all the right papers and still had to go through many layers off bureaucracy. That made getting things extremely easy compared to somebody who comes here without a passport, who has been kicked out of their home country." The transformation from outsider to insider and complete visibility was completed with citizenship and marriage: her husband is Primeval actor Douglas Henshall. thisisplymouth - Friday October 21st 2011 |