A Young Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, July 7

As an Italian-Scots woman, writerdirector Laura Pasetti’s interest in themes of migration was fanned by her research into a previous production by her Edinburgh-based theatre company, Charioteer.

In 2016 the company toured A Bench on the Road, whose script was created from the testimony of women who migrated into Scotland from Italy between 1850 and 1950, as gathered by research projects conducted by the Universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews and Rome.

“After A Bench on the Road, which had seven women on stage, I wanted to do something even more focused and more accessible to young audiences,” says Pasetti, who also says Charioteer’s work with these younger audiences is a very important part of its remit.

“I decided to create A Young Woman Who Lived in a Shoe for just two women on stage,

Receiver.”

The stories Pasetti read in her research toldherthatthemotivationsformigration – as opposed, she points out, to being a refugee, which is an entirely different situation dependent on fleeing for a person’s life from war or danger – are largely the same, although the details may be different. Quite simply, people move because they want a better life for themselves and their family.

“The women, in particular, were really strong, they were the ones who were running the family,” she says. “So I imagined a young woman leaving her country, any country in the world, and the challenges she would have to face. As she passes three borders, she is rejected.

“She is carrying two suitcases; one is filled with dreams and the other memories. We will ask the audience to fill the suitcase with these dreams and memories for her, with the memory they would take if they had to leave their the Immigrant and the country and the dream they would like for their life, and the woman will travel with these until she finds a country they can be safe in.”

Without giving too much away, Pasetti says the show is interactive, and that everyone in the audience can help the young woman reach her destination. Although the show is for ages nine and up, she describes it as “a fairytale for adults too, kind of like a Bertolt Brecht fairytale which can be read on any level. There are lots of metaphors in there.”

She says she wants her audience to take two things from the show: “I want young girls to feel empowered, because we need girls to have the courage to face the difficulties required to make a change in life. And we must all recognise that we’re all immigrants, maybe our grandfather or our great-grandfather – somebody somewhere moved, even if only from one city to another. Immigration is a historical phenomenon.”