In Their Own Words
"It's probably good that [individual stories were not] told to the audience really, because I don't think everybody felt comfortable with telling their story using the play. I think the story that was told in the play was generic, yet specific in a way as well. So I think many people could identify with the different parts of it. [...] So it's kind of pulled from each person's perspective and the angle of what they've experienced. So I think we touched on everybody's story without going in to so much detail really." Female Participant, originally from Nigeria
"You couldn't possibly act your own story. That's how I felt and it would have been too much for me to be rehearsing it. It loses its value to me. It's important [to me]; it's in my life." Male Participant, originally from DRC
"A good project should make everyone feel they're part of a company and the company should feel like being part of a family. So, for that period of time, you feel part of a family. And, yes, okay, that family gets taken away from you in some sense, at the end of the project, but at least it's made you realise that you can feel all those feelings, and you might have forgotten you can feel all those feelings. It can egg you on to go and keep that feeling in some way. So you might go and do a course, or you might go and do a night class, or you might do another drama project. It does take you forward." Janine Waters, Director
"I think the audience will have thought that people are not coming to live here because they want to. They come here because they have problem and they want to be safe. I think that was the most important point, you know? To show the audience that." Male Participant, originally from Cameroon
"[You] see things on the news and feel this quite dispassionate disgust towards all the bad things that are happening in the world. [But, you] don't really think about the person up the road that's going through all that stuff. You don't associate it with your actual real life and something like that brings "African-ness" into a room, where you're sitting next to people as well, that are of different cultural backgrounds and experiences. That doesn't happen very often. And that's important." Audience Member
"The bit that I really thought about afterwards, when I went away, was about children that were born here, and how British they are. You know? It made me think about all this argument about integration and multiculturalism that's going on at the moment, and how long does it actually take you to actually be English and British? [...] And how do you educate somebody about something like Africa?" Audience Member
"It helps us to both remember and forget Africa. It's important to remember that we come from a given place, though we're British today, we have to keep that in mind." Father of young participant
