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RSAMD Dramaworks presents Fugee

Script by Abi Morgan
Directed by Cora Bissett

The Play

Kojo is 14 but no-one believes him; he’s just one of the unaccompanied minors arriving in London, abandoned on the streets of the UK. Ara’s from Baghdad and still hears the bombs at night. Cheung can do back flips and is from a village in China that is more than a thousand years old. Orphans in Glasgow, they are the only family they have now. Together they tell Kojo’s story: a story of lost childhood, tall trees and a murder in motion; a murder by a child that everyone says is a man.

The Writer

Abi Morgan’s award-winning plays include Skinned, Sleeping Around, Tiny Dynamite and Tender and Splendour, which was recently broadcast on Radio 3. For TV: My Fragile Heart, Murder, Tsunami – The Aftermath and Sex Traffic, a multi-award-winning drama for Channel 4. Film includes Brick Lane, an adaptation of Monica Ali’s bestselling book. White Girl, a 90-minute film for BBC2 will be broadcast in early 2009.

Dramaworks worked with Abi Morgan to explore how work is made more specific by setting the play in Glasgow, take note of different legislation in Scotland.

The Director

Cora Bissett has worked as a professional actress/director/tutor for 11 years since graduating from RSAMD. She has worked with all the major Scottish theatres, most recently playing a lead in the sell-out hit Midsummer at the Traverse and in Fringe First winning Slick during the Edinburgh Festival. She has also appeared in the hit feature film Red Road, as a regular in River City, and as Janet in STV’s 12-part BAFTA winning drama High Times.  In 2007 she won the Arches Award for New Directors and created the Cats award-nominated Amada for best use of music in theatre. She has directed numerous community productions for Ankur Productions, including Detainee A, Clarissa and Feast.
 
“I think Fugee is a beautifully written and very special piece; heartfelt, sensitive, moving and educational (without being dogmatic or preachy.) It offers a wealth of challenging parts for a young cast and, I feel, is sincerely written with the young actors' experience being paramount. It has something very important to say to all of our changing cities where often we have no idea what the new people in our midst have survived in order to be here, and the continued hardships they face.”
Cora Bissett, November 2008

Links to the Refugee Issues and the Scottish Refugee Community

A second phase of the project will take place as part of Scottish Refugee Week on 16 June 2009 in the Scottish Parliament. 

Some members of the cast are working with a group in Glasgow called Young Survivors.  These young people arrived in the city as unaccompanied minors and are currently going through the process described in the play.  The young refugees willing for us to dramatise their stories in monologue form to present as prologues for the fully staged version of Fugee. 

The cast will also attend a performance by poet and musician Emanuel Jal as part of the Aye Write festival on 10 March.  Emanuel has altered his tour plans to speak to the young Dramaworks cast about his previous life as a child soldier in Africa, as a refugee and of his journey into adulthood and the creative industries.

The Young Survivors will attend the performances in March 2009.  They will also work with us for the Parliament event.  This will be a staged event where scenes from Fugee and the devised Young Survivors prologues will be interspersed with dialogue and debate about the status of young asylum seekers in Scotland.  The event is designed for an invited audience of MSPs and those advocating for the rights and abilities of children and young people in Scotland.

The beneficiaries of the 2008 Dramaworks Christmas Present project were the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees.  The gifts wrapped during the weekend of 13/14 December were dispersed to the refugee community in the city just before Christmas.

Performances:

The first performances will take place in the Chandler Studio Theatre at the RSAMD on the following dates:

Thursday 26 March, Friday 27 March, Saturday 28 March at 7.30pm.

Tickets are £7 and £5.

[ Download Fugee eFlyer ]

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