ALIENS is a multilingual live documentary, a personal and poetic journey across borders: crossed, blurred, and broken. It’s a mother-and-daughter road trip from Donegal to the south of Italy, weaving their personal stories with those of Italian immigrants in Northern Ireland — once labeled “aliens” — as well as present-day encounters: an uprooted waitress in Donegal, a fierce activist in Calais, a car collector with Alzheimer’s in Casalattico. ALIENS questions what it means to cross a border — between countries, cultures, and generations. At its heart is the dialogue between a mother and daughter: one, dark-haired and Italian, who came to Belfast in the 1990s after falling in love with a Northern Irish boy; the other, pale, with green eyes, born in Belfast to that very boy. Blending personal history, interviews, and historical events, ALIENS merges live performance with documentary storytelling, video, field recordings, and live electronic music. Spanning from the tragedy of the Arandora Star, a ship carrying Italian internees sunk off the Irish coast in 1940, to the Troubles of the 1970s, these stories echo into the present, mirroring today’s tensions around welcoming or rejecting the other. As they journey south, mother and daughter reflect on what it means to live between countries, generations, and identities — a meditation on inheritance, migration, and those who live in between: the aliens.
Financial Support
Autonomous Region of Valle d’Aosta (Italy);
Theatre and Dance NI Spotlight Artist (The Spotlight programme is led by TDNI in collaboration with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI), British Council Northern Ireland, and Belfast International Arts Festival);
Irish Tour supported by the Arts Council Ireland (2026 – Touring of Work Scheme, Round 2).
