A first translation of Italian playwright Emanuele Aldrovandi’s satirical, absurdist play, Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea, darkly refracts Europe’s migration crisis.
In a not-too-distant future, the continent’s economies have collapsed, and three travellers find that the tables have turned as they are forced to flee the very countries which had once closed their borders to migrants. Placing their lives at the mercy of a mysterious people-smuggler, they embark on a journey in a claustrophobic shipping container in the hopes of a better life. Sorry We Didn’t Die At Sea is a dark and comic play that asks audiences to consider the contingency of migrant status, the fragility of civil society, and the risks we run by ignoring the power of the natural world.
Emanuele Aldrovandi is an Italian playwright with multiple awards in his home country. His plays have been translated, performed and published in English, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Slovenian, Czech, Catalan and Arabic, and the plays he has translated into Italian include Trainspotting, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Laramie Project.
The cast has now been announced as Yasmine Haller (Comédie-Française), Felix Garcia Guyer (LIFT, Netflix), Will Bishop (Entropy, Park Theatre), and Marco Young (Another America, Park Theatre).
Director Daniel Emery said, “Italy and Britain have in common that our stories of irregular migration are dominated by the imaginarium of the sea. And we share governments prepared to turn sea crossings into contested political sites, over and above humanitarian concerns. This is the truth into which Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea launches. It has only gained in resonance in the seven years since its writing: the Mediterranean crisis has become an annual event, and we have seen its refracted image in the North Sea. Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea places this violence at its heart.”
Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea is at Park Theatre 13th – 30th September 2023.
