“Artists reach areas far beyond the reach of politicians,” Nelson Mandela told a group of musicians in Trafalgar Square five years ago. He believed a musical campaign started by two exiled South African musicians aided his release and the anti-apartheid cause. Personally, I had my doubts that any art form could have such power until I started to explore the work of Exodus Greater Manchester Refugee Arts Partnership: a three year programme launched in March 2005 to develop refugee arts in association with Community Arts North West (CAN). Working with refugees, asylum seekers and other local communities across the region, Exodusinspires creative projects, such as the recent Exodus Onstage: Refugee Theatre Season. For three weeks (14th November – 4th December 2006) 20 productions will show in seven venues across Greater Manchester, promising to be an explosive and daring mix of work: “…groundbreaking theatre exploring war, diaspora and asylum that will change the way you see the world.” To date it has not disappointed.
Greater Manchester is home to a vibrant and diverse population with currently over 66 refugee nationalities. Many are ‘artists in exile’ who have fled repressive regimes and are injecting new talent, skill and perspective into an established UK arts scene: talent that is not always recognised, welcomed nor understood. “Exodus Onstage [is] dedicated to cutting through the lies and myths around asylum issues and bringing cutting edge theatre to the people of the North West,” Julie Hesmondhalgh, patron of Exodus Onstage (and more famously known for her role of Hayley in Coronation Street) said as she officially opened the season at Hotel Rosetti in Manchester on 8th November 2006. Exodus Onstagebrings real-life human stories to the stage, “creating a voice for the unheard,” Hesmondhalgh explained, and allows the audience an opportunity to hear the issues without censor, media hype nor political spin.
Refuge: Testimonies of a Lost Home by Yasmin Yaqub kicked off the Season alongside Afrocats’ Where is Home?. Refuge is a 17-minute visual installation telling the stories of 8 people seeking asylum against a backdrop of Oldham and Manchester and asking viewers to question their own assumptions and beliefs. Where is Home? is a theatre piece combining African & Caribbean dance, drumming, music and dialogue confronting the growing issues young refugees face regarding deportation and struggling with the universal need to belong. Crocodile Seeking Refuge by award winning playwright Sonja Linden is based on the real lives of five individuals who have sought asylum in the UK and their asylum lawyer Harriet as they all wonder ‘where must we set our boundaries?’ Performances of ThaTha, an energetic celebration of song, dance and life in Africa; A Letter from Home inspired by the experiences of the Congolese community in Manchester; Urban Music Theatre, a contemporary tale of young lives in the city and Exodus Sketchesalso feature throughout the three-week-long programme.
Exodus Sparks, a showcase for new writing supported by North West Playwrights allows refugee writers and performers to share their experiences and receive assistance in shaping, directing and translating their work and is worth a special mention. June 2005 saw a rehearsed reading of a play as part of the University of Manchester’s ‘In Place of War’ project entitled I’ve Got Something To Show You. Exodus set up 23 writing workshops that led to this reading. I’ve Got Something To Show You tells the story of Iranian asylum seeker Esrafil Shiri who, on learning that any appeal to remain in Britain was unlikely to be successful, doused himself in petrol in the offices of Refugee Action in Manchester and set himself alight. He died days later as a result of his burns yet his story never made it into the national mainstream media. I wonder how many other stories like this there might be?
I read about the “trainee artists” on the Exodus programme. Saranda Bogujevci was medically evacuated from Kosovo seven years ago after receiving multiple gun shot wounds and losing eight members of her close family. She is now 21 years old and studying Interactive Arts at Manchester. Jean Blanchard Azip moved to the UK in 1998, aged fifteen as a lone child seeking asylum after losing both parents during the war in Democratic Republic of Congo. His band Britannia Rumba was formed as a result of the CAN/Exodus experience. They are now “putting African music on the Manchester music scene” and have released their first album Decolage.
Other Exodus Onstageevents include the launch of a regular theatre group for refugees and asylum seekers sixteen years and over, a one-act play devised by the Young Refugees Theatre and a seminar, Reflections, about theatre and performance from places of conflict attended by Sharif Abdunnur of the Lebanese theatre company Laughter Under Bombs. Sharif opened his play, a social comedy of the same name in Beirut on 3rd August 2006. An announcement was made two hours before curtain up to say the area was under threat and the show would play as the bombs fell. Laughing Under Bombs nevertheless opened to a full house of 500 seated audience members and over 70 standing in the aisles. Abdunnur commented that “the show opened and the laughs drowned out the bombs.”
I feel foolish for questioning the power of performance, and moved by the stories of asylum seekers in the UK today. Thanks to Exodus Onstage these tales are at last being told and we can, alongside our refugee communities, celebrate their talent and creativity and the cultural richness they bring not only to our country but also to our arts scene.
Afternote:
A rehearsed reading of Laughter Under Bombs will take place 8pm on 18th December 2006 at Theatre 503, Latchmere Pub, Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BW. It is a charity performance where you “pay what you can” and all money raised will go to the displaced children and families who created the play in Beirut.
