Actors air the voices of refugees on stage
Canberra Times
22 June 2004
By Alanna Maclean
Club Refuge reminds me of the chaplain in George Bernard Shaw's St Joan who is utterly keen on the idea of burning a human being to death until he sees what burning a human being to death is actually like.
Actors for Refugees have brought their skills to bear on the problematic ethics of Australia's current refugee policy. Club Refuge employs the basic theatrical device of using the words of the refugees and their supporters to bear witness to what happens to human beings caught in this particular fire and the results are eloquent.
Five actors (Maggie Millar, Kate Atkinson, Corinne Grant, Adam McConvell and Roger Oakley) and two musicians (Kylie Whyte on bass fiddle and singer Rebecca Spalding) sit on a row of chairs only rising when they have something to say or sing.
And what sayings and singings. For an hour we hear the voices of people fleeing one kind of oppression only to run into the Australian kind in the detention camps, on Christmas Island, on the sinking SIEV X and in the rules surrounding the granting or withholding of refugee status and visas.
Among the stark stories of despair there are also moments of humour. Grant makes the most of these, as an Australian teenager dragged reluctantly by an activist mum to visit a camp and as an Australian grandma pulled into action by her granddaughter's involvement with a bloke who has a temporary protection visa.
All the performances have their telling moments and it's a 'telling' that this group has come to Canberra at its own expense to do.
Theatre like this rightly exists to make the world's chaplains think before they are so ready to throw fellow humans into any fire.
22 June 2004
By Alanna Maclean
Club Refuge reminds me of the chaplain in George Bernard Shaw's St Joan who is utterly keen on the idea of burning a human being to death until he sees what burning a human being to death is actually like.
Actors for Refugees have brought their skills to bear on the problematic ethics of Australia's current refugee policy. Club Refuge employs the basic theatrical device of using the words of the refugees and their supporters to bear witness to what happens to human beings caught in this particular fire and the results are eloquent.
Five actors (Maggie Millar, Kate Atkinson, Corinne Grant, Adam McConvell and Roger Oakley) and two musicians (Kylie Whyte on bass fiddle and singer Rebecca Spalding) sit on a row of chairs only rising when they have something to say or sing.
And what sayings and singings. For an hour we hear the voices of people fleeing one kind of oppression only to run into the Australian kind in the detention camps, on Christmas Island, on the sinking SIEV X and in the rules surrounding the granting or withholding of refugee status and visas.
Among the stark stories of despair there are also moments of humour. Grant makes the most of these, as an Australian teenager dragged reluctantly by an activist mum to visit a camp and as an Australian grandma pulled into action by her granddaughter's involvement with a bloke who has a temporary protection visa.
All the performances have their telling moments and it's a 'telling' that this group has come to Canberra at its own expense to do.
Theatre like this rightly exists to make the world's chaplains think before they are so ready to throw fellow humans into any fire.
posted by Actors for Refugees at 6:10 PM
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