Company Information
Banner Theatre describe themselves as 'one of Britain's longest established community theatre companies, with thirty years experience of working with marginalized and disadvantaged communities.' In recent years their work has focused on asylum and migration, and addresses the ways in which arts, theatre and cultural work with and about refugees takes place against a background of misconceptions about issues of asylum generally. Since 2002 Banner have been working on Local Stories/Global Times , a programme of work devoted to exploring the impact of globalization on British communities. First in the series was Migrant Voices (2002) was based on residencies with Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in Salford and Sandwell. This was followed by Burning Issues , a play that explored the background and fall-out of the Miners' Strike in 1984. In 2004 Banner produced Wild Geese , which was based on stories of exile and migration from Irish, Chinese, South Asian, African and African-Caribbean migrants and refugees. These, and their most recent production Strangers in Paradise Circus (touring from 2007), use what Banner calls 'actuality' - the recorded voices of those people who are affected by migration, which is mixed with live performance of specially composed songs to create the hybrid form of the video ballad.
Strangers in Paradise Circus (renamed They get free mobiles... don't they? for the national tour) deals specifically with five myths about refugees and asylum seekers: it's got nothing to do with us; asylum seekers and refugees are robbing this country; asylum seekers are stealing our jobs; asylum seekers are stealing our houses; Britain is a soft touch for asylum seekers. Drawing threads through previous waves of immigration to the UK, Banner sets up a clear political analysis which lays the blame for forced migration firmly with the British establishment, capitalism and with past and present colonialisms. Explicit links are drawn between working class British subjects, refugees and migrants by setting them in opposition to the globalised capitalist system; as a line from one of the songs in the piece says, 'I'd rather shovel shit than be an entrepreneur'.
