Humanising the challenges facing asylum seekers – new play

Caroline, who lives just outside Chichester, took the play as a workshop into four primary schools and was delighted with the response.

“The play is a collection of verbatim stories by asylum seekers to the UK – for reasons of safety I have anonymised them – that I have cobbled together. Three professional actors and I went into the schools.”

Now she is keen to seek further funding with a view towards more school visits next year, perhaps tying in with the 2024 Festival of Chichester.

“I have always been very engaged with asylum seekers’ stories and journeys and I have been doing various things with Sanctuary and I've also done things in Worthing. I've got a company called Article 12 Arts with Kate Viner and it kind of grew unintentionally out of covid two or three years ago. We did a project called Tears of Joy. We asked asylum seekers to paint anything that made them happy on little like teardrops made out of wood. We have done other things as well and we did a project last year with The Novium on the community response to the Art of Chichester exhibition.

“Kate has currently got a fantastic, wonderful exhibition as a private individual in the Cathedral at the moment and I have been thinking about doing some writing. Usually I come in as a director to direct somebody else’s play but this time I thought that I would talk to some asylum seekers and ask some questions and see if I could a create a play out of that. It is based on their verbatim stories. I just asked them a few questions like why did you leave, tell me two elements of the journey and what is it like being here. It's really simple just so that I could have a framework and I have pulled it together. I have been working with three professional actors. I gave them draft one back in April and then we rehearsed it and we went into the schools. It is 20 to 30 minutes long. I wanted it to be a workshop as well so that young people can really understand the issues and also engage with what it is all about. And then we took it into St Josephs, Bosham, Lavant and Bury. It's a really diverse collection of stories we have put together. Primary schools at the target audience, years five and six, top end primary, children aged ten and 11 and I would definitely like to develop it further now to see if we can do more with it next year. I would love to see it go into more primary schools and also to community groups, definitely something we could be looking to do for next year’s Festival of Chichester.”

The piece received great feedback. Ruby, one of the students, said: “I thought that it was very sad to know that just because people believe in something different they have to leave their home, family and country.” Erika, another, added: “I think it was superb play because the play was about hope even if we are going through something difficult we should always have hope. The play also talked about kindness and showing it to each other always.”