| Warrior Square by Nick Wood |
| First presented in 2006 by Theatr Iolo |
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synopsis: The exciting story of a brother and sister’s escape to the United Kingdom. Persecuted for being different, Andrea and Riva are forced to flee their homeland, and now they must learn to live in a country very different from their own. This powerful new play explores and challenges stereotyped images of refugees and asylum seekers. Warrior Square is a moving play about loneliness, friendship and hope. Giving young people a chance to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, this is dynamic storytelling theatre at its best. Commissioned and produced by Nottingham Playhouse Roundabout Company, it has been produced in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Croatia and Bosnia. Theatr Iolo’s production will be the first in Wales. Warrior Square was selected for the Berlin Theatre Festival , and won the Brudder Grimm Prize in 2003. |
There is 1 review of Theatr Iolo's Warrior Square in our database:
| Distressing but essential viewing | |
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Warrior Square
by Nick Wood
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[print] |
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venue Theatr Iolo |
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October 28, 2006 |
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| Theatr Iolo is just what a young people's theatre company should be: a group that tackles difficult issues, proclaims the right of young people to engage with these issues - and always manages to offer an experience that is utterly theatrical. Warrior Square is another play about refugees - several young people's theatre companies have tackled the question, often admirably. This one, like most of Iolo's work, is an existing scripted play and one that has already proved itself internationally - I think it's been translated into seven languages. And yet it isn't obviously that much more informative or accessible or dramatic than many other plays that feature a displaced family - here, typically, it's a mother and two children - fleeing from personal and political tragedies at home. In this case, they're from some European country (one might guess in The Balkans) where even neighbours have become enemies because of conflicting ideologies or religions or ethnic origins. Apart from the fact that this was a special performance in Cardiff’s Temple of Peace with guests who are involved in the refugee problem, what made this show so urgent, so harrowing, is the simplicity of both the narrative and the production. Just two performers (Lisa Rahza and Sam Dunham) play all the parts on a stark set (designed by Holly McCarthy) that consists of a boarded-up window, a table and two chairs, with a highly effective soundtrack from Antony Lamb (played, on this occasion, live by him with Gael Cunahiro and Brian Kasiko). In his familiar style director Kevin Lewis pushes the story along with no undue sentimentality, at a great pace and with economy and great clarity. In brief, it's a sharp, effective piece of storytelling. At the centre is Andrea, a boy not only going through those difficult teenage years but traumatised by seeing his father killed - and counselling for the various traumas suffered by refugees is not easy to come by, as we were told in an after-show discussion by Mike Lewis of Children in Wales and a trustee of the Welsh Refugee Council. Victims like Andrea can wait three years for therapy. By then, one suspects, the damage is done. Andrea is lucky in a way because he's crazy about playing football, the lingua franca of teenagers, partly because he carries with him the match ball given him by his father just before he, his younger sister and mother escaped. That symbolic value is emphasised when he feels he can eventually kick the ball into the sea and start trying to make his own life and integrate into the society of his adopted country. The plays ends where it starts: with an uncertain future for the family. And Nick Wood's script (originally for Nottingham Playhouse Roundabout Company) is far from optimistic: the world, it seems, is full of racial and ethnic prejudice. This fictional family's new life would probably be as difficult as Michael’s (not his real name), another special guest at this performance, who saw his aunt slaughtered in front of him and spent months hiding from those that would kill him in his native West African country or in neighbouring countries before he arrived in South Wales to suffer the regular humiliations heaped on refugees by the system. And Andrea and Riva are also lucky in that they have their mother: we heard from Mike Lewis how so many children escape the metaphorical prisons of their own country to spend their lives in British detention centres for no reason other than they have no family. Warrior Square - the title comes from the nickname given by the refugees to the temporary accommodation they are herded into when they arrive in the UK – is not comfortable and set so directly in the context of the reality of the problem as it was at the special showing it makes even more distressing viewing. It was, perhaps, the sort of event Daily Mail readers should be forced to attend – they’ll just have to pretend to be schoolchildren from years 5,6, and 7, for whom the show has been made. Warrior Square is touring schools in South Wales until November 10. The show is also going to the Mercury Theatre in Colchester on 26 and 27 October and at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon in March 2007. .............. The show is going to the Mercury Theatre in Colchester on 26 and 27 October. It is also going to Polka Theatre in Wimbledon in March 2007. |
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| reviewer: David Adams |
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| If you know of any other existing review, or if you have any more information on Warrior Square, (perhaps you were in the production or were the author or director) then please use the form below to send us the details |