iceandfire/actors for refugees: Asylum Monologues

Wednesday 24 October, Barton Hill Settlement, Bristol

I got into work this morning and one of my colleagues had just heard that this was on at midday, so we decided to spur-of-the-moment it across there.

Briefly, this is how Asylum Monologues works: the script is constructed from first-hand testimonies of asylum seekers and contextual information about the process of seeking asylum in the UK. This script is then read from the page by actors, accompanied by a live score. It's not a fixed work. The script is regularly reworked with different stories and updated information about the UK asylum system. The performers are found through Actors for Refugees, a UK-wide network of professional actors.

The stories are truly horrific. Everyone should hear them, because there is no way you could imagine the extremes of trauma or terror that has driven these people to leave their homes and seek asylum in another country. And when we're so regularly asked to have an opinion about "asylum and immigration" (as if they're the same thing... they're not), it's important not become complacent.

What's perhaps more shocking is the intractability and brutality of the UK asylum system. The case made here is that it is designed to be practically unusable by the asylum seeker. The script also suggests that the wording of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, designed post-WW2, does not anticipate state crimes against the individual which are often cited today; and that the UK government regularly exploits these dated parameters of how to determine the threat posed to the individual in their home country, in order to find against the asylum claim.

As you can probably tell from what I've just written, my main problem with the script was with these statements about the asylum system. Don't get me wrong, I find the information presented here much more convincing than the mixed up bag of stats that tends to get wheeled out in the media. But by relying so heavily on one source for its facts (Amnesty International), it gave me an uneasy air of oversimplifying the issue, and sounding just as reactionary as the 'opposing' arguments. Personally, I think Amnesty International is an amazing organisation, and I was a fully paid up campaigning member when I was younger, but I know good people, in my family, who perceive Amnesty to be biased against any government in power - supporting terrorists if they have to. It has become a complicated subject - full of confusion and misunderstanding. By falling into "them and us" territory with "the system", I think the project undermines its very real potential to change people's minds.

As "theatre", Asylum Monologues is all about getting its point across. At first, I felt really uneasy about the fact that the stories of three African asylum seekers were being told by three very well spoken and probably very middle class, white actors. But it didn't take long for that unease to drop away. In fact, the notion that these could be anybody's stories probably came across more strongly as a result of the obvious displacement. And even though the stories were told in first-person, it never felt like they were being appropriated by these actors or by the production as a whole. Other than their being introduced as such, the main way you could tell they were proper actors was that they constantly spoke with that actors' cadence (I don't know how else to describe it, but you'll know it when you hear it - emphasis on the end of sentence...)

I can't say much about the music, I'm afraid. Multi-skilled musician, but it was mainly just filler when a pause in the narrative was needed.

It was good to see this in a community hall, attended by a lot of local residents. I was surprised by how attentive the audience was, considering how many distractions there were around the space and how un-showy the piece was.

I'll say it again, these are powerful stories and everyone should hear them. I think the impact will stay with me for some time. They are such important words.