Wanting to Love
by Ramya Jegatheesan
@RamyaJImages
I wanted to fall in love with Camila’s Bones. I really did. The story was tantalizing: set in a dystopian future, the play follows Camila (Fiorella Pennano) a young Latina woman who works in a slaughterhouse in the city’s labour camps. She is foreign. She is temporary. She is bar-coded, and she needs out. Her way out comes in the form of an illegal surrogacy for a barren couple. She bears them a child, and in return she gets to stay on Canadian soil. The trouble is, the couple disappears and the State is after Camila and her 'unregulated baby'.
Valbuena’s play tackles real issues facing Canada: vulnerable and exploited migrant workers and a barrier-ridden immigration process. So it is unfortunate that the play fails on so many levels.
