TERRA
The performance combines the practices of gardening, caring for plants and the earth (lat. TERRA) with stories about migrations and emigrants and reflects on the effort, pain and adaptation of "transplantation" that occurs in the process of migration and especially the forced change of land.
Thinking about migrations, the play aims to awaken empathy with people who were "relocated" - through movement, songs, contact with plants, earth and water of the actress and musician Ljubica Damčević. The performance includes videos in which documentary images are interwoven, just like the fates of emigrants.
The motive for creating TERRA is the need to talk about migrants and migration in a more compassionate way.
We live in a time of massive amounts of global information through access to numerous media and digital platforms. It makes some facts and stories readily available and harder to conceal (such as violence, wars, witnessing crimes, etc.), but on the other hand, it does not seem to contribute to a general understanding of the Other and feelings and actions of solidarity and help.
Statistics and TV reports do not speak as loudly as we would like, even if they are alarming. Forced displacement has doubled in the last decade. With numbers estimated to exceed 120 million people in 2024, we are getting used to the suffering of refugees and migrants around the world.
But still, I started to imagine this play while watching a documentary, right at the moment when a Syrian immigrant desperately screamed: "You can't do this to us, you can't do this to us!". Standing in a crowd in front of an official of a European country who was reading a list of names to be transferred to another country, this man was on the verge of being separated from his family and friends.
The TERRA focuses on the place in our mind and heart that can feel the pain of others and warns of the need to care equally for people and plants/nature. It is a wake-up call to the urgency to take care of our natural environment, our planet and our fellow citizens who are looking for a new land."
J. Anđelić, director
In addition to Serbia, the play was performed, with great success, at festivals in Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and France. The play is performed in English, Spanish, Italian, French and Serbian [original].
Impression
This afternoon I watched a short, poignant performance by DAH Theatre "Terra".
In it, plants and people play, both with similar fates: uprooted from their yard and forcibly transplanted into another world - not always friendly and inclined to help. In the documentary video that is part of the performance, people are not just numbers of refugees, they are faces, expressions, views from which thoughts and feelings can be read.
The whole performance is presented before us by the outstanding artist, violinist, singer, actress, performer Ljubica Damčević. Her role is a ball of short texts but also songs in Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, our language, which she sings to us in her wonderful soft and dark voice.
Admiration for Jadranka Andjelic's delicate and investigative direction.
But something quite special was the audience. Contrary to expectations and popular opinion, there were about a hundred high school students in the czkd hall, from Belgrade but also from some other regions, whose languages were mixed with laughter, and then with silence during the careful monitoring of the performance. They met the end shaken - at least those who participated in the conversation with the artists - faced with the feeling that life can be rough and uprooting painful.
Wonderful small and big things and people all around us...but little visible in this cruel time.
Ivana Stefanović, composer and writer
