Northern theatres put refugees' work centre-stage

In 2013, West Yorkshire Playhouse staged Refugee Boy, an adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah’s novel about an Ethiopian-Eritrean teenager arriving in Britain. Alongside the play, the theatre engaged extensively with refugees and asylum seekers in Leeds, and the following year the Playhouse was named the UK’s first theatre of sanctuary. “We didn’t want it to just feel like we’ve put on a play about refugees, great, we’ve ticked that box,” says Ruth Hannant, who heads the Playhouse’s creative engagement team. “We wanted to try and embed it into our wider theatre programme.”

Today, theatre of sanctuary events include a women’s choir, a drop-in session for young refugees and asylum seekers, and regular, informal opportunities for new arrivals to practise their English. In particular, the theatre has worked with Syrians, helping them to find their feet in Leeds. While some activities, such as drama workshops and public performances, involve participants directly in the creative work of the theatre, others are about simply welcoming people through the door. “In a world where you feel displaced, having that place to come every week where you feel truly a part of something can be a real lifeline,” says Hannant, who believes it’s all about “human contact”.

Hannant’s words might pinpoint the key to shifting the national narrative. Next week is the 20th anniversary of Refugee Week, which was established to push back against a wave of negative feeling towards refugees. At a time of increasing animosity, seen in the rise in hate crime after the Brexit vote and the government’s “hostile environment” policy, and with local authorities in the north of England housing a disproportionate number of new arrivals, this year’s events in Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield are taking on an important role in building understanding between communities. As Refugee Week is emphasising with its campaign encouraging people to take simple but meaningful actions to support and celebrate refugees, small points of connection can have a big impact on attitudes. Theatres, as a platform for sharing stories and generating empathy, could play a vital part in this change of perspective.

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At Home in Manchester, a new festival is a way of showcasing the creative work already being done by refugees and asylum seekers in the area. One More Push is a new storytelling show by Fereshteh Mozaffari, an Iranian writer living in exile in the UK. “It’s about the idea of pain and rebirth and her experience as a refugee, as a professional woman and as a writer,” explains Anne Louise Kershaw, community and outreach programme producer at Home. The venue is also using its Made at Home programme to support Iranian musician Ali Jaberi, who will be in residence in the theatre developing All Because of Love, a show inspired by the life and work of 13th-century Persian poet Rumi.

The week of events, from puppet theatre to poetry, builds on existing relationships with the refugee community in Manchester. The crucial shift, though, is that the theatre is making this work more audience-facing. Over the course of the festival, Home and its producing partner Community Arts North West will be working with more than 100 artists from the refugee and asylum seeker communities in Manchester, including African musicians’ collective Amani Creatives. There’s a similar expansion in Sheffield, where the third Migration Matters festival will be the biggest yet, involving theatre, music, dance, film and visual arts.

This year, Refugee Week at the West Yorkshire Playhouse will have a slightly different face. Rather than the broad programme of events it has run in previous years, a celebration of refugee stories will be folded into a main-stage production, Searching for the Heart of Leeds. Performed by a community cast and including performances by Asmarina Voices, the theatre of sanctuary choir, it is based on interviews with more than 200 Leeds residents. The show’s director, Alex Ferris, believes that integrating the theatre of sanctuary programme with a main-stage show “shifts the narrative”, asserting that these voices are just as central to the local community as anyone else’s. Likewise, Kershaw stresses that the work Home is doing is as much about artist development as creative engagement. “Not all artists only want to be labelled … refugee,” she points out. “They’re also theatre-makers, writers, musicians, and it’s about showcasing and celebrating the talent that exists within our city.”

Ferris stresses that the Playhouse’s status as a theatre of sanctuary impacts on all aspects of the organisation’s work “equally and intrinsically”. Searching for the Heart of Leeds involves theatre of sanctuary participants as both interviewees and performers, and a scene set within Leeds’s refugee community plays a pivotal role in the show. “It helps our central character who’s having a few doubts about living in Leeds,” explains Ferris. “It’s the catalyst for helping her to reconnect and understand what her city’s all about.”

• Searching for the Heart of Leeds is at West Yorkshire Playhouse, 19-23 June. Refugee Week festival is at Home, Manchester, 16-22 June. Migration Matters festival is in Sheffield, 19-23 June.