Fertile Ground Diaries: Noise in the Waters

Too much noise overwhelms Boom Arts' performance.

Low-pitched, ambient tones play loudly over projections of dark, fast-moving water on the walls of the Alberta Rose Theatre. Turquoise light bathes the proscenium stage, where a single man wearing camouflage pants recounts identifying the bodies of dead refugees and assigning them numbers: 12345, 12876, 14545, etcetera.

This reading of Noise in the Waters: Music & Theatre on the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis is Boom Arts' well-intentioned collaboration with MercyCorps, prefaced by a lecture on migrant affairs by PSU Doctoral Candidate Jamie Surface.

The true stories of of several refugees (performed by Bobby Bermea) include Jean Baptiste, a boy too terrified to sleep on his boat to safety, and Sakina, a Nigerian girl who was raped and then drowned. The same images keep popping up: fish eating bodies on the ocean floor, orange plastic rafts, handfuls of cash and inexperienced boaters.

While the themes are relevant and the language provocative and emotional, the performance feels maudlin and overacted. In moments where numbness might be a stronger choice, Bermea opts for screaming. And it's difficult to follow the character changes as Bermea switches between narrator and victims. We mostly get yelling, which is especially overwhelming combined with the projections and ambient tones that seem like jumbled TV feedback.

Humanity's ugly stories shouldn't look pretty on stage, but the show's preoccupation with shocking its audience actually makes it harder to understand the complex issue.

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