DISPLACE.

Young People

DISPLACE
by West Yorkshire Playhouse Schools Company

West Yorkshire Playhouse Schools Company Tour of Leeds Schools to 24 October 2003
Runs 45min + workshop
Reviw: Timothy Ramsden 24 October at Raynville Primary School

Valuable education programme making asylum seekers' experiences real.This is the 5th programme in the Schools' Company's 'Living Stories' project. Unlike others, where individuals have portrayed their own experiences, this is built on interviews with asylum seekers (several of their voices are heard during the performance on tape). Adding story material from Russian tradition, this becomes a powerful story told with complex theatricality.

Performer John Barber is a puppeteer; as a refugee father he carries his puppet-son Micha by various means of transport - openly or as stowaways - to safety.

Tom Kirkpatrick's music and sound score, mixing prerecorded and live sounds, underpins events - the tramping march of boots, for example (Barber's also sculpted a sizeable boot to press against Micha's nose in a vivid image of oppression). The music also creates the sad regret of departure, with overtones of romantic melancholy.

Living out of a suitcase is bad enough. Here, homes both in country of origin and in England, are represented by suitcases - the neat window-apertures of England contrasted with the shell-devastated lid of the home left behind.

It's a pity the company's opted for a style which asks Barber both to speak to his son in character and add some comments as a Narrator direct to audience, removing the immmediacy built up elsewhere.

More successfully, at the centre is the old tale of an immigrant whose heroic action in saving a local lad leads to his acceptance. It focrefuly contrasts the hide-and-run experience of Micha and his father in their own lives.

Anti asylum-seeker prejudice is included, but thankfully not over-emphasised. To be handled in more detail, it needs another play; here enough is made of the point to show that Micha and his father would like nothing more than to return - and feel at - home. (For a time harassment at school makes the boy want to assimilate his name as Michael.)

The subsequent workshop session is carefully developed from opening movement games, which incorporate the idea of families moving round the world, to the point where individual pupils are given the opportunity to speak a single sentence message to Micha. Friendship reigns.

That Barber's puppet is expressive in every turn of his head, while his handler adopts a low-key performance style himself, makes the connection between actual Leeds youngster and supposed asylum-seeking child more real.

Performer: John Barber
Musician: Tom Kirkpatrick

Director: Gail McIntyre
Assistant director: Emily Mann
Designer: John Barber

2003-10-30 18:37:03