Across the UK many towns and cities have witnessed an influx of people who clearly have few historical ties with the local region. These people are legal residents. They are officially labelled asylum seekers or refugees.
They might dress differently, speak other languages, and their English could be heavily accented. But despite British National Party claims that they are rorting the system, asylum seekers do not live a life of luxury.
The most likely place to find asylum seekers is on a council estate. Although regardless of where they end up refugees are easy targets for anyone motivated by intolerance, xenophobia, or with a chip on their shoulder.
For these reasons and more, iceandfire theatre company is using performance art to put a spotlight on the stories told by displaced people now living in the UK.
iceandfire has a solid reputation for putting on productions that deal with issues of displacement and conflict. The company has close ties with Amnesty International UK and officially came into being on 27 January 2003. This date is commemorated worldwide as Holocaust Day. It is especially symbolic for iceandfire given that founder and writer/director Sonja Linden’s family were Jewish and German refugees.
In telling the stories of UK asylum seekers iceandfire has teamed up with Australian theatre group Actors for Refugees (AFR). Since 2001 AfR has been using “the collective might of Australian actors to influence community attitudes toward refugees and asylum seekers and to encourage a humanitarian response to their plight.”
AfR Coordinator, Chistine Bacon, has been working closely with iceandfire to develop the UK series of performances.
“What we aim to do as actors, is the exact opposite of what the tabloid press and the government are doing,” she explains, “We want to present asylum seekers and refugees as human beings, rather than statistics or case studies.”
Bacon says that as skilled communicators, actors are uniquely able to “give faces and voices to those who have been denied these things.” Being involved with the Monologues is a process of awakening for both cast members and audiences.
“Most actors who read in one performance are keen to do more, as they can see that our methods simply work. They talk to audience members afterwards who tell them how much their eyes have been opened, and how little they knew – as there are so few truthful accounts of the [asylum] system in the public domain. The words most often used by audience members are ‘shocking’ and ‘deeply moving’,” she says.
According to Bacon most people who come to the shows know little or nothing about the asylum system. But once exposed to the realities of refugees entering the UK, many audience members are deeply affected.
“Our work has a real capacity to mobilise people, especially in smaller cities and towns,” says Bacon, “We recently performed Asylum Monologues in Middlesbrough and over 250 people people came, which our collaborating partners assured us never happens in that town.
“After the show, many members of the audience were moved to take action and signed up to local campaigns and actions, including a public protest which attracted hundreds of people, which we have been told was largely because of the effect of our work. It does change people’s perspectives and it does propel them into action,” she says.
Part of the reason the Asylum Monologues are so hard-hitting is that the stories are in the words of refugees themselves.
“We never change or fictionalise people’s words,” says Bacon. All of the stories told in the Monologues are sourced from interviews conducted by AfR or drawn from existing testimonies collated in research by other organisations.
This gives the Monologues a sense of realness it would be impossible to replicate through a work of fiction.
Iceandfire aim to perform wherever possible across the length and breadth of the UK. Details of upcoming performances, including a tour of ten cities scheduled for June, are available here.
Actors, (“We are particularly low on male actors,” says Bacon), directors and musicians who would like to get involved with this project or join iceandfire/AfR in developing its growing national network of theatre specialists are invited to contact Christine Bacon for more information.
