Raising awareness

Just seven decades on from the Second World War, which saw countries across Europe and the world open their doors to those fleeing the Nazis, 70 years since families in England fled the nation’s cities to take refuge in the countryside, we appear to have developed a collective amnesia about those events.

Now refugees and asylum seekers, that is to say people in need of refuge and asylum, are treated with suspicion if not outright hostility by huge swathes of society.

Hoping to provide a new voice in the debate is the ever-challenging Pilot theatre with its latest production.

The York-based company which makes ‘grown-up work for young audiences’ has always pushed at boundaries, creating engaging work that speaks to younger audiences with both wit and intelligence.

The latest story it is planning on taking out to those audiences is The Bone Sparrow, a novel published in 2016 written by Australian author Zana Fraillon.

The book tells the story of Subhi, a young Rohingya boy who has spent his whole life inside an Australian detention camp. While his world is full of fences, in his imagination he is free. The book was shortlisted for both the Carnegie Award and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

Fraillon says: “When I wrote it, I actually thought by the time it was published it would be a work of historical fiction. I was sure that our immigration policies would be so shunned by the rest of the world, that we would do a turn-around. Instead, it’s known as the ‘Australian solution’ and has been taken on by other countries around the world.”

When Fraillon wrote the story, she was not welcomed into the world of publishing with open arms.

“I sent it to quite a few publishers and no one was interested. And then I sent it to literary agent Claire Wilson, and she loved it and said, ‘yes, I want to take you on’. But when she offered it to Australian publishers, they weren’t interested initially. And then when it was received very well in the UK, the Australian publishers jumped on board, and decided they wanted to do it as well.

“It didn’t surprise me at all that it was initially received much better in the UK than in Australia, and that the uptake was slow. In fact, if anything, I’m surprised that kids in Australia are studying it.”

Fraillon’s story has been adapted by Australian playwright S Shakthidharan for Pilot.

He says: “I felt that it was such an interesting way to tell the story of someone in detention, and I hadn’t seen that contrast before between the brutal reality and the charming nature of [Subhi’s] imagination.

“I had already done a fair bit of work with refugees and asylum seekers in western Sydney. It can be heavy. But I was drawn to how charming the magic of the book was. It has a feeling of otherworldliness that I could sense would be beautiful on stage.”

S Shakthidharan is still fairly new to the whole process.

“I’ve only become a writer recently. Before that I was as a community artist. In Australia, there’s a practice called Community Arts and Cultural Development, which is about the idea that communities deserve control over their own cultural capital.

“And that power and privilege comes from that and can be lost if you don’t have it. I set up an organisation called Curious Works, building up cultural leaders and handing them the tools to be able to do that in

their communities. That’s

flowed through to my writing practice.”

He says that, while The Bone Sparrow deals with a potentially difficult subject and he is striving for clarity for a younger audience, he has no intention of dumbing down the story. He says he also wants to be ‘open about the reality of the situation’.

“I felt if we could make his world and journey real, then that’s what we needed to do for the kids to be able to relate to that.”

Making work that young people feel they can relate to is a speciality, of course, of Pilot theatre. The company’s artistic director Esther Richardson says that focussing on the camp where the hero Subhi lives, was key.

She says: “Then we can create the world of Subhi’s imagination. That allows you the possibility to do anything you want, which is just so freeing. Miriam Nabarro, the production’s designer, has approached the show like a visual artist. We also teamed up with a puppet maker called Alison Duddle, and video designer Daniel Denton to try and create this language that is both analogue and digital. These two elements work together to create these moments of magic.”

Richardson agrees that the issue of refugees and asylum seekers is one of the most immediate for theatre and theatre-makers to be tackling today.

“I really hope that it gets people doing what they can to support the refugee charities and the people who are on the frontline. This is a very critical time here.

“In Britain we could pursue the ‘Australian solution,’ and I think making sure people have an awareness of that is very important. And raising awareness specifically about the Rohingya is also important. How we welcome people, how we work towards better solutions as a society is also key.”

The Bone Sparrow, York Theatre Royal from February 25- March 5, then touring to April. 23. pilot-theatre.com