In the Belly of the Whale: A Powerful Play on Migration and Humanity
The play draws its strength from both its subject matter and its form, which prioritizes visual impact: precise lighting, moving and eloquent scenography. Transparent screens installed at the center of the stage compartmentalize the space, making it slide from a detention center room to a corridor, from a cell to an academic presentation screen. These modular surfaces tighten the angles and materialize the pressure that crushes migrants and officials.
A Story of Humanity and Struggle
The play is set in a world where migrants, Ali, Mariam, and Fodonosha, are trapped in the red threads of the Arachne system. Each of them struggles and resists in their own way, trying to overcome the lines (borders), to slip through, to extricate themselves... but in vain. The play is a contemporary tale of great intensity, which brings to the stage a mosaic of touching, moving, and fragile characters, too human.
A Collaboration of Artists
The play is the result of a collaboration between the Tunisian National Theater and the Croatian National Theater of Rijeka, with the involvement of Anis Kamoun (assistant director), Maja Lezaic (dramaturgy), Alan Vukelic (scenography and lighting), Riadh Bedoui (music), Sandra Dekanic (costumes), and Souhail Ben Hamida (video design). Director Marwa Manai drew on texts from several contemporary authors, including Iva Papić, Dorotea Šušak, Samia El Amami, and Mouna Ben Haj Zekri, to explore the themes of migration, mobility, and borders: human, universal, and always burning questions that continue to fracture today's societies.
A Cast of Complex Characters
The play features a talented cast of actors, including Sonia Zarg Ayouna, Nadia Belhaj, Thawab Aidoudi, Allam Barakat, Mario Jovev, Serena Ferraiuolo, and Edi Ćelić. The characters come from all walks of life, with different experiences and realities. There are the three migrants: Ali, the young Tunisian who crossed Turkey pretending to be Syrian to obtain asylum; Mariam, the young pregnant woman (out of wedlock) who fled before being discovered; and Fodonosha, whose nationality is uncertain, between Azerbaijan and its neighboring countries.
The System and Its Victims
On the other hand, there are those who serve the system, sometimes despite themselves, but who are no less its victims: the academic researcher, an Italian who explores the abuses in detention centers and constitutes the narrative thread of the story; the director of the detention center; and Leila, the young Tunisian who interrogates illegal migrants. The first seeks to organize the deportation of all migrants in order to close the center within ten days, while the second tries to justify this expulsion by proving the nationality of each migrant.
The Symbolism of the Play
The title, with its explicit religious symbolism, refers to the prophet Jonah, prisoner of the darkness of the whale's belly. Here, the whale becomes a symbolic being and a global system that engulfs everyone, whether they are migrants seeking security or officials subjected to bureaucratic laws. The story becomes a metaphor for detention centers: places where humanity is suspended, where identities are laid bare, and where dreams are extinguished or reborn.
A Critique of the System
Each character also carries a form of "sin", in the symbolic sense: that of the researcher's cold and pragmatic knowledge, more concerned with her subsidy than with the lives she observes; that of the officials, who apply the law to the detriment of human dignity; and that of the migrants, ready to renounce language, religion, history, and name in order not to be deported. "In the Belly of the Whale" represents the double darkness experienced by individuals within oppressive systems: the first obscurity is the loss of identity and human dignity, while the second is the impossibility of escaping the chains of reality.
A Powerful Message
Despite the diversity of texts that inspire it, the plurality of nationalities of the actors, the variety of accents and languages, and despite some length noted at times, the play manages to create a fluid and deeply moving work, which plunges the spectator into the very heart of the system's darkness. A manifesto work that gives body and voice to the suffering of irregular migrants and their struggle for recognition of their humanity. It highlights the tension between the human and the institution, between the individual who fights for survival and the system that seeks to maintain its rules intact. It also criticizes the contradictions between international human rights laws and their practical applications, often disconnected from human realities. Through this disturbing play, Marwa Manai reminds us of the fundamental right to mobility and freedom of movement without borders. Borders often made of invisible threads woven by our fears and silences. Let us no longer fear the red thread...
