All World's Beach. Staging Global Crises in Anders Lustgarden's Lampedusa (2015)

The paper revolves around Anders Lustgaren’s play Lampedusa, performed at Soho Theatre, London, in March 2015 and later on the Aldeburgh beach at High Tide Festival in September 2015, when the migration crisis was at its peak together with the rise of xenophobia and populism in Western countries. The play tackles issues such as mass migration and financial crisis in Europe through the interwoven monologues of two characters both representative of local and global contradictions: Stefano, a Sicilian fisherman who lives in Lampedusa, and Denise, a white East Asian woman who collects debts for a payday loan company. The paper offers a close reading of the ‘places’ and ‘spaces’ mentioned in the play suggesting how they contribute to map the ‘routes’ of global crisis provoked by the politics of austerity and financial capitalism. It analyses the structure of the play and the characterization of the two protagonists in order to unveil provocative juxtapositions and frame the political engagement underlying Lustgarten’s new millennium theatre. It contextualizes the play within the debates on global inequality and refers to Ashcroft’s concept of ‘transnation’ as an interpretative key to the world of Lampedusa.