Theatre 4 Identity is a movement started by The Grand Mothers of Plaza De Mayo, which draws attention to their goal of finding the people who were stolen from their families as children during the Argentinian “Dirty War”. This year the Calder Bookshop Theatre presents two short plays about memory and identity, Loose Ends and Two Tapes.

In the tiniest theatre, behind the smallest bookshop with a homely atmosphere, it is hard to know what to expect, and I was intrigued, staring at the stage in front of me with a life boat hanging from the ceiling and books ready to be sold behind me.

Each of the plays aimed to raise awareness about the loss of identity these people around the world face, after being stolen from Argentina in the 60s/70s when they were children. The first play was Loose Ends by award-winning Argentinian playwright Griselda Gambaro, about a man and woman who meet on a cruise and end up stranded together. Quite frankly, I cannot tell you much about this play other than that the female character was constantly screeching about losing her daughter and there was an angry man wanting to get home. This play was probably supposed to extract some emotion from the audience and make them feel sympathy for the woman as she had lost her only child in a tragic accident, but these emotions were never stirred. To put it simply, the acting was preposterous. Lines were delivered as if the actors still had the script in front of them and it was their first time seeing it. My body was stiff from the uncomfortable second-hand embarrassment I felt by the end of it.

The second piece was Two Tapes, and I sat in hope that this would be a major improvement from the first, until the same actress walked on again and my heart sank. If this was not bad enough, it was pushed to extremes as the whole play consisted of a mother and daughter talking into a tape recording to send to one another, so of course the actress from the former play had a monologue that was ten minutes long. She was supposed to be expressing the heartbreak of losing her child, but all that could be read from her tone of voice was someone moaning about losing their mobile phone. Finally she finished and, to my great relief, the actress playing the daughter was, compared to the other two, fabulous and for the first time that night I felt the emotion that The Grandmothers of Plaza De Mayo wanted us to understand. These children taken in the “Dirty War” who eventually found their biological families, were torn between the love for their adoptive parents and the loyalty they felt towards the person who gave birth to them, and a guilt about something that was not their fault.

Theatre 4 Identity is ultimately for a good cause, however I think the director of these two performances should reconsider a few things.

Theatre 4 Identity is playing until 8 December at The Calder Bookshop & Theatre. For more information and tickets see The Calder bookshop website.