He said he was 19 when we met him. But the authorities thought he was older. And that he was lying. Which is entirely possible. But wouldn’t you do the same thing? If what you had to go back to was the Taliban?
As the co-writer and director of All the Queen’s Children I spent months with my colleague researching unaccompanied refugee minors who go missing from Care. A mouthful which seems quite specific and it is. But it’s an issue that needs attention, because of the hundreds of children (and those claiming to be children) who arrive in the UK, usually trafficked, two-thirds of them go missing. And that’s a government statistic.
Where do they go? Why do they leave Care, seeing as that’s what they’ve been seeking, care?
It’s impossible to give answers because as the phrasing suggests, the kids are missing, we can’t find them to ask what they’re doing. It’s assumed they’re working illegally, as servants, in kitchens, drug factories or brothels. So, that’s all stuff that’s happening to children, here, in Britain. The young refugees and asylum seekers we met in our research were those attempting to stay in the system and were often going through ‘age disputes’ with Immigration.
All the Queen’s Children follows the stories of four young refugees. We depict everything from flying with false passports, trafficking on lorries to riding the top of a land-cruiser across the Sahara. The latter mode of transport was the actual experience of one teenager, H, who has since gone on to form part of our company and will be with us in Edinburgh.
From escaping a military training camp aged 14, H will now sit in a small venue just off the Royal Mile as his life story is played out in front of him by his teenage counterpart. H decided not to be in the play, but came to rehearsals. He’d always wanted to make his story into a movie, so we’re halfway there.
Yet just as we’re jetting up to Scotland, one of the teenagers we spoke to is being deported to place he spent one year escaping (from Afghanistan to England if you walk, hitch-hike, hide in airless containers and do stints in foreign jails). Not that we don’t respect the decisions of the authorities, but if it weren’t for people like him we wouldn’t be able to tell the enriching and fascinating stories we do.
Stories that are worthwhile, relevant, and of course, entertaining: plays should be about people and experiences, not statistics and shouting. I don’t need to go to the theatre to feel bad about my inability to help the Third World. With All the Queen’s Children we’ve included all the silly and funny bits people told us, as well as lyrical choreography, a Chorus and gritty dialogue. We owe it to the people who have lived these extraordinary lives, not to wallow in ‘what should be’, but to celebrate diversity through theatrical innovation.
[Written and published on http://www.whatsonstage.com/]
Monday, 23 August 2010
Monday, 9 August 2010
3rd day at The Ed Fringe
We're all buzzing here as we've just read our first review. We got...wait for it...four stars!!! We've all been piling into Dawn's room around the laptop reading the review online from Broadway Baby which is fantastic and does our show justice. Hopefully the public will see the review and our audiences will get bigger and bigger!
The Fringe is great, we've all been seeing shows, from stand up comedy to late night seances. Last night Hanibal, who has inspired our story arrived yesterday. He'll be helping us flyer for the show as well as coming with us to see shows that we've been able to pay for with our fundraising money.
I'll keep this short because we're all so busy, but keep checking for more reviews and updates!
The Fringe is great, we've all been seeing shows, from stand up comedy to late night seances. Last night Hanibal, who has inspired our story arrived yesterday. He'll be helping us flyer for the show as well as coming with us to see shows that we've been able to pay for with our fundraising money.
I'll keep this short because we're all so busy, but keep checking for more reviews and updates!
Four Star review from Broadway Baby
Check out our FANTASTIC review from Broadway Baby from our second show that we did last night at the Edinburgh Fringe...
This young company have taken on a huge and emotive subject here; the plight of young children who arrive in this country as refugees, unaccompanied by adults. It could prove disastrously polemic in less skilled hands, but as written and directed by Dawn Harrison and Rosanna Jahangard and performed by a sixteen strong ensemble of youngsters, it is riveting.
Focusing on the tales of Samuel, Lule, Yike and Sofia, who all flee their countries for different reasons for the promised land of Britain, it takes us through the horrendous procedure these kids encounter on arrival on our shores. Not least of their worries is they have to prove they are children and not adults. Variously at the mercy of over-stretched social services, 'boyfriends' more interested in pimping them out ('thirteen hours… that’s thirty men, one meal, a packet of cigarettes and four bruises') and drug dealers, these young kids soon realise that they are anything but Her Majesty’s children.
In flashback we follow the harrowing tale of how our four young refugees travelled this way, beginning in trucks across deserts, where their money crazed traffickers take away the food they brought with them to make room for more refugees. The overcrowded, water-free trucks are only the beginning of the nightmare, as they encounter unscrupulous boatman and rough seas to swim.
The complexities of staging this journey (as well as the small sub-plot of three well-heeled Brits 'travelling' in a gap year) are confronted full on, and a large sheet, ribbons, and some spheres are used brilliantly to create bars, cars, trucks, boats, the sea and much, much more.
You might see better acting on the Fringe this year, though some of these young people are rather good, lacking only technical skills like projection and comic timing. What you won’t encounter anywhere else is something as real and up to the minute as this brave piece of theatre. It really hones in on how unfair the world is, and how cosseted we are in the West. Whatever the inconveniences and traumas we think we suffer here, they are as nothing to what some very young people deal with on a daily basis.
As we all swish around Edinburgh making art and discussing other people’s art, this young company represents the true and valid spirit of what the Fringe used to be about. The character of Samuel is based on a real boy, who actually helped in the construction of the piece. He has now been granted leave to stay here. Last week, however, another of the young people helping on this project was deported back to Afghanistan where he will face punishment from the Taliban.
As one of the characters says with simple but moving clarity as the last line of the play:
'If it’s drama you’re after you should visit my country'.
This young company have taken on a huge and emotive subject here; the plight of young children who arrive in this country as refugees, unaccompanied by adults. It could prove disastrously polemic in less skilled hands, but as written and directed by Dawn Harrison and Rosanna Jahangard and performed by a sixteen strong ensemble of youngsters, it is riveting.
Focusing on the tales of Samuel, Lule, Yike and Sofia, who all flee their countries for different reasons for the promised land of Britain, it takes us through the horrendous procedure these kids encounter on arrival on our shores. Not least of their worries is they have to prove they are children and not adults. Variously at the mercy of over-stretched social services, 'boyfriends' more interested in pimping them out ('thirteen hours… that’s thirty men, one meal, a packet of cigarettes and four bruises') and drug dealers, these young kids soon realise that they are anything but Her Majesty’s children.
In flashback we follow the harrowing tale of how our four young refugees travelled this way, beginning in trucks across deserts, where their money crazed traffickers take away the food they brought with them to make room for more refugees. The overcrowded, water-free trucks are only the beginning of the nightmare, as they encounter unscrupulous boatman and rough seas to swim.
The complexities of staging this journey (as well as the small sub-plot of three well-heeled Brits 'travelling' in a gap year) are confronted full on, and a large sheet, ribbons, and some spheres are used brilliantly to create bars, cars, trucks, boats, the sea and much, much more.
You might see better acting on the Fringe this year, though some of these young people are rather good, lacking only technical skills like projection and comic timing. What you won’t encounter anywhere else is something as real and up to the minute as this brave piece of theatre. It really hones in on how unfair the world is, and how cosseted we are in the West. Whatever the inconveniences and traumas we think we suffer here, they are as nothing to what some very young people deal with on a daily basis.
As we all swish around Edinburgh making art and discussing other people’s art, this young company represents the true and valid spirit of what the Fringe used to be about. The character of Samuel is based on a real boy, who actually helped in the construction of the piece. He has now been granted leave to stay here. Last week, however, another of the young people helping on this project was deported back to Afghanistan where he will face punishment from the Taliban.
As one of the characters says with simple but moving clarity as the last line of the play:
'If it’s drama you’re after you should visit my country'.
Friday, 6 August 2010
New company member for Edinburgh!
Sami and Hanibal. Sami plays the charcater which is based on the real journey that Hanibal made when he escaped illegally forced military training in Eritrea.
Hanibal works with Sami on improving the detail of the military training scene.
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Reviews from the July previews
“Mesmerising, vivid, utterly believable. When youth speaks this loudly everyone should listen”
(Sam Butler, Associate Director of Fevered Sleep)
.................................................................................
“Moving, poignant...these are stories that really must be told and this is a production that really must be seen”
(Cassie Friend, Co-Director of Redcape, winner of Fringe First and Total Theatre Award 2008)
(Sam Butler, Associate Director of Fevered Sleep)
.................................................................................
“Moving, poignant...these are stories that really must be told and this is a production that really must be seen”
(Cassie Friend, Co-Director of Redcape, winner of Fringe First and Total Theatre Award 2008)
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
NEWS RELEASE: One stays, another goes – refugees who inspired the play
The real-life counterpart of All the Queen’s Children’s central character, Marcus Hanibal, represented as Samuel and played by Sami Chokri, has been granted ‘leave to remain’ after a long and arduous application process.
The 19 year old Eritrean arrived in the UK on his own when he was just 14, after a year long journey across deserts and seas. The company are delighted for Hanibal, because they all became good friends when he agreed to share his story with them.
This is what one of them had to say after they worked with Hanibal for the first time:
“None of us could imagine anything that he had been through ... It was just so different from anything we had ever experienced. Everyone felt in awe, knowing he had been through so much and had come out the other side, and the same age as us”
Whilst the company celebrate Hanibal’s success story, they are sorry to hear another of the young men they interviewed as part of their research process has been put into a detention centre and is likely to be sent back to Afghanistan, which he says is likely to lead to his persecution as he escaped recruiters of the Taliban.
The company met the teenager when he was in the process of his age dispute. On the second night of All the Queen’s Children’s Edinburgh previews in Reading, Rosanna found out what had happened:
“When you think about what he has lived through, in a war-torn place, of course he will seem old. We thought he was coming to see the play tonight, we thanked him in the programme but he won’t know that now.”
Now, the reality of his situation reminds the young people of the importance of performing All the Queen’s Children in Edinburgh, where they hope to attract refugee audiences and entertain those who don’t know anything about the plight of unaccompanied refugee minors in the UK.
The 19 year old Eritrean arrived in the UK on his own when he was just 14, after a year long journey across deserts and seas. The company are delighted for Hanibal, because they all became good friends when he agreed to share his story with them.
This is what one of them had to say after they worked with Hanibal for the first time:
“None of us could imagine anything that he had been through ... It was just so different from anything we had ever experienced. Everyone felt in awe, knowing he had been through so much and had come out the other side, and the same age as us”
Whilst the company celebrate Hanibal’s success story, they are sorry to hear another of the young men they interviewed as part of their research process has been put into a detention centre and is likely to be sent back to Afghanistan, which he says is likely to lead to his persecution as he escaped recruiters of the Taliban.
The company met the teenager when he was in the process of his age dispute. On the second night of All the Queen’s Children’s Edinburgh previews in Reading, Rosanna found out what had happened:
“When you think about what he has lived through, in a war-torn place, of course he will seem old. We thought he was coming to see the play tonight, we thanked him in the programme but he won’t know that now.”
Now, the reality of his situation reminds the young people of the importance of performing All the Queen’s Children in Edinburgh, where they hope to attract refugee audiences and entertain those who don’t know anything about the plight of unaccompanied refugee minors in the UK.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Reading Refugee Support Group performance
Last night we performed half of 'All The Queen's Children' at The Cultural Night, organised by Reading Refugee Support Group at South Street Arts Centre. We had a great audience who were really engaged and seemed to really enjoy the performance. We had some great feedback from people praising our research and saying that they really understood and recognised the issues raised, and related to some of the characters.
The response from the audience was great and really rewarding for the group, since it was clear that the refugees who watched it related with the characters and stories. It has given us confidence that the play is an important and meaningful piece.
Overall the night was great fun, we saw some local bands, dancers and a designer showing off her dress creations. A highlight was the gorgeous food prepared by the women's group - a few members of the company even tried Mopani worms!
We are now going to resume rehearsals for the South Street performances on the 6th and 7th July. Keep checking out this blog for updates!
The response from the audience was great and really rewarding for the group, since it was clear that the refugees who watched it related with the characters and stories. It has given us confidence that the play is an important and meaningful piece.
Overall the night was great fun, we saw some local bands, dancers and a designer showing off her dress creations. A highlight was the gorgeous food prepared by the women's group - a few members of the company even tried Mopani worms!
We are now going to resume rehearsals for the South Street performances on the 6th and 7th July. Keep checking out this blog for updates!
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