Cast
Eleanor Roberts Ojan Genc Tanya Cubric
Crew and Creatives
This play, written by Ella Dorman-Gajic, follows a story of a Serbian woman and her experience with the European sex trafficking ring. It‘s a story of self preservation told sensitively that leaves you feeling
The back of the stage has a constructed wall from cardboard with boxes placed in the space that hold props used throughout The performance. There is a bed with a cardboard frame that retracts up as to allow more space on stage. There are bloody and dirty underwear strung above the audiences heads which aren’t as impactful before the performance as after as you realise the shear volume of victims there are, a fraction represented by those underwear. The audience follow the story of Jana, a family orientated woman working in her late dad’s shop, wishing for an opportunity for a better life for her, her sister and her mum. When a handsome Ukrainian man, played by Ojan Genc who represents all the men in the hour long performance, offers to take her to London she jumps right in.
Most of the story is told through direct address to the audience by Jana, who switches between talking to us and recreating the scenes with the supporting characters. Maddy Corner and Ella Dorman-Gajic discussed how the fast pace of the scenes reflects Jana‘s scattered memories as she recalls them to us. This also explains the constant multi rolling and change it timeline; the performance starts with police screaming through the door and about to tear it down with Jana retelling is how she got to this point.
One of the key aspects of the piece is the exploration of language. The most obvious feature being projected subtitles in multiple languages on the cardboard wallpaper. When questioning the director about this she stated that she had always been an advocate for accessibility in theatre and that allowed a larger audience to attend the performance. Another thing the writer decided to specify in the script is that when Jana is speaking in her native language, instead of speaking in Serbian and having the subtitles aid us she speaks in a British accent and when her character is speaking in English she does so in broken English. I think this is an interesting artistic choice which I didn’t understand until it was explained. It came off as trying to cater to an English speaking audience who might struggle to understand Jana through an accent which didn’t sit right with me. The writer clarified that she started the play with Jana speaking in a very clear British accent to protect her from the prejudice the audience may have and force them to withhold their judgment until they get to know her better.
Ella wanted to break the perpetuated narrative that everyone who is forced into sex trafficking is a “perfect victim”; she wanted to create a 3 dimensional character, which Tanya executes perfectly. Jana has to climb her way up the ladder to protected herself but sacrifices her integrity as a form of self preservation. She gets roped into an admin role, then she gets paid, she gets into a relationship with one of the men, Nico, who initially tangled her in this, and eventually has to help hide key information kept in a brief case when police bust a van full of women as she was helping import. At the end of the piece she openly questions if she if she is really innocent or if she became an accomplice. The play is careful about not blaming Jana but allowing the audience to make that decision.
One thing that worried me when booking the tickets were how graphic the rape and sex scenes could be, especially in the context of sex trafficking but to my relief it was handled in a sensitive and thoughtful way. Though violence is talked about it is never explicitly shown. There is one scene where Jana performs Oral sex on a man who turns out to be a investigative journalist who wants to help her, which she refuses. The director said she didn't feel the need to add explicit scenes because they are just not needed to convey what happened and credited the amazing work of Tigger Blaize, the intimacy director for his influence.
Overall this is a well written, directed, acted and designed piece that intends to bring awareness to a topic that deserves that attention. Along with the 10% of all tickets sales going to UnSeen there is no reason not to support these upcoming artists.
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