From mountainous, war-splintered Albania to the red clay and cotton fields of rural Alabama, a young woman comes to carve out her destiny in a land of strangers.
Leaving behind the machine guns, the rape camps and the bitter cold, she slowly learns to navigate a world that is strewn with its own land mines, grotesqueries and hidden pockets of grace.
Atlanta artist Jonida Beqo recounts this journey in exacting and piercing detail in her solo performance piece, “Harabel: A Sparrow Over a Minefield.” By turns shattering and transformative, “Harabel” is a one-of-a-kind evening of theater, in which Beqo’s gifts of poetry, dance, design and storytelling merge to form a powerful tribute to the resiliency of the human spirit.
Local theater-goers may know Beqo as a costume designer, and that is the conceit she uses to frame the show.
As the story begins, we find a frazzled wardrobe mistress working behind the scenes of a “live” production. With a wink to the audience, Beqo begins to perform her memoir, and the ghosts of the past come alive like so many diaphanous costumes and silent mannequins. (The clothes are designed by Beqo, naturally, and the set, a facsimile of a costume warehouse, is a collaboration with director Justin Anderson.)
Beqo is so inured in the imagery of war that it becomes the vocabulary even for her wardrobe work. “I investigate the massacre of unraveled stockings, broken rib corsets and the hit and run bodies of contorted dress gowns,” she tells us by way of introducing herself. She then goes on to demonstrate that she is far more than a seamstress. She is a survivor.
Well known in poetry-slam circles, Beqo is a dazzling and hypnotic presence. From the concrete bunkers of Albania to the bastions of entitlement she encounters in Alabama, she zigzags across time — juxtaposing corpses with cornbread, rivers of blood with the Crimson Tide.
Arriving in New York, she is a fluttery and frightened bird. As an exchange student in Alabama, she is considered an exotic. But it’s a two-way street: The tackiness of her first American roommate and the overweening sense of entitlement of the rich are terra incognita for this immigrant. As she says in the poem “Wedding Dress:” “I was sewing for rich women with closets the size of my old country, and nothing to wear.”
But even as her heart is ravaged by the horrors of her homeland, she is ennobled by love. She marries her Albanian sweetheart, becomes a mother and finds fulfillment in her work and faith. She goes from invisible to indelible.
As directed by Anderson, Beqo is spellbinding; her energy never flags throughout the 100-minute, intermissionless performance. It’s remarkable the way she reverts to broken English when portraying her younger self, newly arrived on American shores, and the way she dispatches advice to her young daughter, so full of questions.
In the end, hearing “Harabel” is like discovering a stash of poems by an unknown genius. She is both a blazing performer, and writer with an uncommonly fine ear for language. If there is justice in the world, “Harabel” will soar from obscurity and find a broader public. For Beqo is an artist of the first order. A very rare bird, indeed.
Theater review
“Harabel: A Sparrow Over a Minefield”
Grade: A
7:30 p.m., Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m., Saturdays-Sundays. Also: 2:30 p.m., Oct. 31. Through Nov. 10. $20-$35. Theatrical Outfit, Balzer Theater at Herren’s. 84 Luckie St., Atlanta. 1-877-725-8849; theatricaloutfit.org
Bottom line: A powerful and poetic account of one immigrant’s life.
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