This week sees the French authorities in Calais deciding upon the fate of the southern area of the Jungle refugee camp that has sprung up in the last year and a half as a makeshift home for those trying to reach the UK. The creation and then destruction of the camp raises plenty of moral questions, but I just wanted to highlight the presence and work of Good Chance Theatre in the Jungle. The theatre has been widely reported in the UK and international media, and high profile visitors such as The Globe Theatre and Jude Law have helped to raise the profile of the theatre in the camp.
Is the creation of theatre in a refugee camp a justified response to the human suffering of those people that find themselves living such terrible conditions?
The Globe Theatre went to Calais to perform ‘Hamlet’. In Act 3 Sc 2, Hamlet gives his advice to the players, saying that “the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was/ and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature…”( III,ii,19-20).
Good Chance aimed to create a safe and warm space for people to express themselves and their situations. This might seem insignificant in the face of the many complex problems faced by displaced people; however, holding a mirror up to the situation to reflect on both what is happening, and to whom, is perhaps the best way that we can prevent the situation endlessly repeating and replicating itself over and over.
I hope that the theatre survives at the Jungle. Article 14 of the UNDHR states that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”, and theatre creates a space that allows those people seeking asylum to tell their stories.
ibtheatre 