From Euripides to “The Archers”: how Syrian refugees stage their stories

The liberal middle classes, like Sham’s family, have been hit hardest by refugee life. Without the foreign bank accounts held by the wealthiest Syrians, they have no savings; unlike the working class, they aren’t trained for manual labour. Raneem’s husband, a skilled metal worker, has picked up good work, albeit illegally, whereas Sham’s father wouldn’t stand a chance of practising as a lawyer in Jordan. A friend of the family recently took a job in construction and dropped a chainsaw on his foot within a week.

The Trojan Women project has been a godsend for families in crisis. Maha, 25, met the assistant director in a UN food queue. A few weeks after joining rehearsals, when the roof blew off her makeshift home, her entire family were taken in by a fellow participant. This didn’t stop Abusaada from lecturing her about learning her lines the next day. “The whole point,” says Paget, “is that we treat them like professionals. Not just victims.”

When I visit Fatima and Raneem, I feel like I’ve walked into the dormitory of a high-achieving private school. Conversation leaps from the latest gossip about movie stars to the most of earnest of textual discussions about Greek drama. (“How should we interpret Talthybius..?”) “Some of my family told me I shouldn’t let my daughters take part,” says Shareff. “They told me a woman’s face shouldn’t be displayed on a public stage. I say they’re just jealous they don’t have daughters who can get their head round Euripides.”

When the women involved are asked to write letters to loved ones back in Syria and to read them as monologues, Fatima produces a letter of almost erotic desire for the house she left behind, imitating the Trojan Queen Hecuba’s description of her crumbling, desecrated hundred-room palace. “I miss kissing your walls and lying on your tiles. You protected me and gave me dignity. I was like a tree. Someone came and uprooted me.” Later Fatima tells me: “Every woman is a queen in her own house. I have lost a palace, like Hecuba, because I am no longer queen of my own house”.

There are plans to re-stage the Trojan Women production, again in Jordan, if the team can find £35,000 in support. Paget has her eye on a Jordanian arts festival as a possible host: “Although most of the audience who came to see the play were fellow refugees, a lot of the Jordanians who did see it came away saying: ‘We had no idea.’ If we integrate it with a Jordanian arts community, their audience will have a chance to understand the stories behind the kids they see on the street, the people they usually see trying to wash their cars at traffic lights. What Syrians often don’t have in their host communities, what being a Hecuba or and Andromache gives them, is dignity.”

For now, few people have time to worry about theatre. In November the Jordanians cut all medical aid for refugees. In December, the UN’s World Food Programme announced that it no longer had the funds to hand out coupons. An emergency appeal allowed it to stay afloat until mid-January, but at the time of writing most of Paget’s actresses expect to lose all food support within two weeks. This will take most refugees over the line from living to existing. “Without food coupons,” says one woman, “every hour of my day will be spent worrying about the next meal.” Drama therapy is a luxury.

When I telephoned Sham this week she wasn’t even sure she would be staying in Amman. “We have no illusions about Assad. But even in Damascus there is more chance of being able to eat than in Jordan.”

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