Culture, Arts and Refugees

Project Focus:

A production of Pericles, by William Shakespeare, involving refugees and asylum seekers and actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company,which aimed to find modern resonances in the text that related to the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers.

Background:

Cardboard Citizens is a theatre company, specialising in participatory drama with excluded and disadvantaged groups.Their work with homeless and ex-homeless people includes work with refugees and asylum seekers. Refugees and asylum seekers have attended weekly workshops with the company and the company wanted to create a production that addressed their issues.

Participants:

Company of performers included mainstream professional British actors and refugees and asylum seekers. Participants (as audience members) in the project included refugees from Albania, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Iraq, Latin America, Serbia and Nigeria.

Activities:

The company reduced Pericles to an hour-long performance through workshops and performed the story with a five-strong cast for two weeks to groups of refugees and asylum seekers from different communities.After show feedback from audiences elicited comments and stories from other refugees and asylum seekers. The production was performed again in warehouses in south London with a cast of 12 including a large number of asylum seekers.The second performance integrated some of the stories that came out of the first production.Audiences were initially seated at desks with 18-page asylum application forms to complete.The production was again followed by an after-show discussion addressing refugee issues. The process subsequently grew into a forum theatre production for schools telling the story of an Ethiopian asylum seeker arriving at a school.The children and young people are, through a process of ‘legislative’ theatre, asked to draw up guidelines on how the school could improve its response to refugees and asylum seekers.

Outcomes:

• Participants developed voice and performance skills.
• Gained understanding of texts.
• Built teamwork, trust and confidence.
• Enabled refugees and asylum seekers to share stories of exile.
• Audiences gained clearer picture of the process asylum seekers go through and their stories and experience.
  

Sources:

Research interview and questionnaire. Background materials by external evaluators.

Contact details:

Cardboard Citizens
26 Hanbury Street, London E1 6QR
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7247 7747
E: mail@cardboardcitizens.org.uk
www.cardboardcitizens.co.uk