Refugees will perform at the Young Vic in a new play recreating the “Jungle” camp in Calais, it was announced today.
Stephen Daldry will direct the production of the work by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, founders of the Good Chance Theatre. The pair won the Editor’s Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards last year for their outreach work at the camp. Young Vic artistic director David Lan said refugees would star alongside actors as he announced his final season before he steps down after 18 years at the helm. He said: “The play is quite robust theatre and challenges the misconceptions around the camp — what happens when refugees from a range of backgrounds meet well-meaning volunteers from the UK.
“The experience for the refugees doesn’t end when you make it across the Channel. The spotlight might have moved on from Calais, but it doesn’t mean the problems have gone away. The newspapers, TV and books that have been written about it have been of tremendous value, but theatre allows us to do something a little bit different.”
The Jungle is a co-production with the National Theatre. Daldry will return later in the 2017/18 season to direct The Inheritance, a play by Matthew Lopez, looking at the legacy of gay men in modern day New York in the wake of the Aids epidemic. Other productions include a revival of Moonlight writer Tarell Alvin McCraney’s first UK play The Brothers Size and My Name Is Rachel Corrie, dramatising the diaries of the American peace activist killed in Gaza in 2003.
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Lan, 65, said the season was a fitting end to his tenure as it showed the variety which he had always strived for. He also said he wanted his job to go to someone from another background. “I happen to be white, male, gay, Jewish and from South Africa,” he said. “I think it would be entirely appropriate for the next person to be entirely different.
“I wanted to leave the Young Vic in a strong position and I believe it is. I’m not making any plans for the future yet, but I want to do everything — writing, directing and producing.”
