A place of safety

Following the account of the GKN workers’ struggle in Il Capitale, Kepler-452 presents a new theatrical investigation conducted aboard a search and rescue ship with EMERGENCY and Sea-Watch.

The Italian, Bologna-based company Kepler-452 company embarks on a search and rescue ship, the Sea-Watch 5, in the Central Mediterranean to try to understand first-hand what happens on the world’s deadliest migration route. In almost five weeks of sailing, the crew rescues 156 people, who are then disembarked in the “place of safety”, the port of La Spezia. The show is the result of field research, which began with interviews by directors Enrico Baraldi and Nicola Borghesi, continued with a residency in Lampedusa and the subsequent departure for the Mediterranean route. Along the way, the artists met operators from Life Support, the EMERGENCY ship and Sea-Watch, who became the protagonists of the play, staged with Nicola Borghesi. A Place of Safety is the story of the encounter between a theatre company and a group of people who have decided to devote part of their lives to rescue at sea, but also, and above all, a spark of attention on the collective blind spot of our Continent: what happens in the Central Mediterranean. Ultimately, it is an intimate reflection on what Europe aspires to be, what it is not, and what it could become.

PRIZES
Franco Enriquez Award for dramaturgy 2025
Le Maschere del Teatro Award for best Italian new authors 2025

Performance in Italian, English, Spanish and Portuguese with surtitles
Duration: 1 hour and 50 minutes

«If we can define A Place of Safety not only as a successful performance but even a memorable one, it is because it manages to materialize the epistemological fracture that Europe, the West, is experiencing. […] With this work, Kepler-452 takes a significant artistic leap, placing their theatrical explorations of reality within the tradition of great continental dramaturgy – from Milo Rau to Rimini Protokoll – while refining the company’s stylistic signature.»
MINIMA&MORALIA – Graziano Graziani – 01/03/2025

«The theater this company stages in an innovative yet now recognizable way is a language of the present time. It effortlessly finds a narrative perspective in reality and in nonprofessional actors, who are also the true protagonists of the story and who self-narrate with remarkable ability to reveal themselves.»
INTERNAZIONALE – Annalisa Camilli – 04/03/2025

«What emerges is a choral narrative, fluid in its scene composition and movements, […] a sort of powerful civil oratorio, yet avoiding the risk of rhetoric. […] It is precisely by showing the fragile side of Good that A Place of Safety becomes a great performance, because it goes beyond the noble gesture of an arm lifting a body. It becomes a powerful fresco on the rifts, the internal crises within a vision of progress.»
HUFFPOST.IT – Mario De Santis – 04/03/2025

«If at the end of the performance the flags of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans fall from the balconies of the theatre and even the gallery overflows with people in ovation, if the hall is always sold out, […] if word-of-mouth across different generations works better than traditional advertising, it probably means that this operation was needed.»
TEATRO E CRITICA – Silva Maiuri – 05/03/2025

All the Press Extracts

Insights
THE BLUE ZONE reportage from Sea Watch 5

Backstage

Trailer

Videos

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visualizza questo post su Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Un post condiviso da Sea-Watch (@seawatchitaly)