What is Fugee about?
Fugee, by Abi Morgan, is the devastating story of 14 year old Kojo. His family murdered in front of his eyes, he is ripped from his home in Côte d’Ivoire and thrown into the British asylum system as a child refugee. Fugee reminds us of the part that we play in the current migrant crisis, and of the fifty million child refugees around the world running from conflict and poverty. Children who just need a place to call home.
What was our directorial vision?
In Fugee us as a class had quite a few things to consider before we even started blocking the play. These being, the chaos of being a refugee, emotions, the themes of the play, the style of the play and the audience impact. The chaos of being a refugee was a big thing for us to include in the show. Even though the writer of the play Abi Morgan included this when the play was written, we really wanted this to be shown in the refugee centre. This is shown through all of the different languages being spoken by the children all shoved together in one place. Due to this there is always chaos and lots of miss understanding in the refuge. There are also a lot of emotions shown in this play. For example, Anger, sadness, love, loneliness, and fear. These emotions can be caused by past trauma from their home countries (e.g. War) and the fact that all of these children are out of their home environment with no one familiar to them. An example of the way emotions are used to represent/ show trauma is through the character of Kojo. Kojo’s character deals with his trauma though fear and anger. The themes of this play are also very important, some of these themes are family, love, friendship, child soldiers, asylum, loneliness, and chaos.
What do you think the intended audience impact for this production is?
In this play the audience is always very aware of what is going on due to the constant direct addresses to the audience, how episodic the play is and how multi-rolling is used. Lastly, the intended audience impact is a very important factor in our show. Our intended audience impact is to get the audience thinking about child refugees and how most systems don’t care about them (shown through Kojo’s age disputing and how he ends up in a hotel with people over twice this age). This is important because it describes the trauma refugees face every day. Even though this play was written years ago the same thing is still happening. It also helps make the audience think about how are voices given to people that don’t have a voice?
Why is this play relevant for a contemporary Australian audience?
This play is relevant to an Australian audience because Australia at the moment is not treating refugees well at all. For example asylum seekers/ refugees caught up in Australia’s policy have many of their international human rights violated (They may be subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention, as well as restrictions on their freedom of movement; for many, their detention will consist of countless amounts to torture and ill-treatment). The history of Australia’s mandatory and indefinite detention system is well known for the psychological and physical torture, deprivation, intimidation, and physical violence, rapes, murders, indefinite incarceration, and rejection of persecution and even death of refugees being detained in detention facilities around Australia.
What design ideas did you come up with a why did you make these choices?
I worked on the projection design of this play. I decided to include photographs of refugees in our slideshow to elicit empathy from the audience while they watched the show. I wanted to be clear that situations similar to Kojo’s (and in some cases worse) occur all over the world. Even though the play is a work of fiction, it addresses very real issues, and by incorporating genuine photographs of refugees, I can elicit empathy from the audience. Because this play is set in the 1990s in the United Kingdom, the audience may believe that the issue of refugees is not as serious in Australia as it is in the United Kingdom. However, when I compared some of the statistics from Australia to those from Ukraine and Iraq, the audience can see that refugee displacement is a problem all around the world, especially in Australia. I chose photographs with a lot of people in them instead of images with ideas of loneliness because the play is about unity and family. This not only demonstrates the togetherness that these minority groups may feel, but it also conveys the large number of asylum seekers and refugees who are currently looking for a place to call home. I also decided to add statistics on children who are refugees in our design. Because many of the audience members will be there to watch their children, incorporating data about them may help them sympathise with the story on a more personal level. The opposite of the font text was utilised colour of the photographs to make them stand out more. I added facts regarding women to not only show that many of these incidents involve women, as opposed to the major focus of Kojo’s story, but also to give Mother, Ara, and Rosa more depth. Images of mothers feeding their hungry children might elicit even greater empathy from viewers, as they can virtually see themselves in the shoes of these mothers.
I combined statistics about the number of people granted visas with a picture of a boat to highlight that while refugees can sometimes afford to fly like Kojo, many of them arrive by boat. Because the photograph used warm colours like brown and orange against a bright blue lake background, it was a very contrasted image. This might be a representation of how not everyone in the world is affected by conflict, and that there is beauty among us. This image also stands out and provides the audience with fascinating images.
Character Profile
I played the character of Ara. She is around 14 years old, and she does not have an occupation but near the end of the play we find out that she got asylum status and gets to go to school. One of Ara’s big fears is the fact that she thinks that she may end up back in her hometown in Afghanistan. At night she still can’t sleep due to some of her past traumas, when places around her used to get bombed. Another one of her fears which I think begins to develop throughout the play is the fear of her loosing Kojo. Kojo and Ara’s relationship develops throughout the play and when Kojo becomes more hostile towards her she beings to fear that she will lose him and Kojo will become trapped in his own trauma’s. I feel that Ara needs to feel like she has a family somewhere as she has lost a lot in her life. I feel like she also need to feel accepted by the people around her (Kojo, Hassan, Cheung, and Rosa). One flaw I think that Ara has from her dialogue during the play is she is very clingy towards Kojo. I feel that she does this as she wants to be able to understand and protect him. Ara’s habits are also part of her flaws. But apart from being clingy she has the habit to always be looking after people before herself. For example, when she comes multiple time to the hotel where Kojo is to make sure that he is ok. Also, when she wakes him up in the middle of the night after Kojo had been having a nightmare and crying. There is not a lot of information about Ara’s backstory, but what we do know is that she is from Afghanistan, she is very smart and prides herself in learning and she is around 14 years old. She also came to the UK and the refuge alone. Some vocal techniques I used when playing Ara were volume and emphasis. I used volume because there were some scenes where I had to speak louder because she was annoyed or angry (this didn’t happen a lot) or when she had to speak clam and lovingly when she is with Kojo and finally when she was with Kojo in the bedroom when everyone was asleep, she had to speak quite quietly. I used emphasis because there were some words that had to be emphasised because they were important, and I needed the audience to know that they were important. For example, when she is with Kojo in the kitchen it is important for the audience to know that this is an argument, and I emphasized my words in that scene, so it was more impactful for the audience. 2 movement techniques that I used when playing Ara were facial expressions and gesture. I used gesture mostly in scenes with Kojo as its helps to show the love that Ara has for him. For example, when Ara takes Kojo’s hand when they are talking about how much they love each other. I did this as I wanted it to be impactful for the audience. I used facial expressions to really represent how Ara was feeling in the moments in the play. One line that Ara says that represents my choices is the line “Do they know what has happened to him? Tell them you story Kojo, tell them, tell them”. When I acted this line, I used Facial expressions to show sadness and anger, gesture to point at Kojo, volume as I was on the verge of yelling and emphasis as I was emphasising the lines “Tell them, tell them”.
What were some challenges during the rehearsal process?
Some big challenges that we all faced during the rehearsal process was the fact that the entire ensemble cast was onstage throughout the entire show. This means that no one went off, so even if you are a main character in one scene and the next you may be a child in the refuge or a child soldier. This also fits into multi-rolling. We had to used multi-rolling because of the fact that there were so many small parts in the play. This means we had to create obvious shifts from one character to another. It was also a struggle as the play is very stylistic meaning that the play was episodic and broke the 4th wall many times during the performance. When we first did a read through of the script, we all were struggling to figure out how we were going to do it. There were also quite a few acting challenges, these included the emotional journey, the emotional truth, and playing with realism.
Were you prepared for the performance? Why or why not?
I was very prepared for the performance as I knew what I was doing. I knew all my lines and blocking (Positioning of myself on the stage). This went well as it made it easier for to be able to make my character and her emotions more convincing.
What went well throughout the Performance?
A lot of things worked well with our performance the second time round as we had more time to be able to clean and run the show. It also gave us time to change our movements around the stage (if needed). All of this helped to make our show run really well. Something that also went really well was the end of the performance where the cake was brought out. This part of the play is important and the fact that on our last show the finale was really good.
What did you need to do differently?
Something that I would do differently if we were to do the show again is to make Ara and Kojo’s relationship a little more convincing. I think that just doing small things would help convince the audience a little bit more.
What are the best aspects of your final production?
The best parts of our production I think were learning about the Treatment of refugees on the UK and Australia. I also loved working with my class as they are all very talented.
