Mikyla Jane Durkan, director of Potentially Brilliant Productions, describes the drama workshops they run on socially related topics, particularly in regard to the ‘Refugee’ play staged at the Casa during April 2017.

We have as a group, over a 12 week period, examined some of the astonishing and disgraceful facts about the refugee situation incorporating the current crisis, the blurred definitions and use of language to confuse and demean, the political and economic causes and historical treatment and attitudes concerning refugees.

Fundamentally we have tried to explore and empathise by using drama and theatre to understand [or imagine the unimaginable] how it must feel to be forced to leave your family and home.

We have used the stylistic principles of Greek Theatre combined with individual’s stories from the group (whose experience vary from first hand experience of the ‘Jungle’ in Calais to volunteering with Refugee groups). Other participants had no prior knowledge or experience of refugees but came along to learn and explore.
Theatre can’t change the world but it can be a place to question, empathise and hold a mirror up to look at ourselves and society and we hope, at the very least, make an audience more aware and able to question our understanding and treatment of refugees, as a society.

‘PB challenges, its theatre that gives people a voice, theatre that aims to raise awareness about issues that effect all our lives’.