Queens of Syria (the documentary) tells the story of fifty women from Syria, all forced into exile in Jordan,who came together in Autumn 2013 to create and perform their own version of the Trojan Women, Euripides’ timeless Ancient Greek tragedy about the plight of women in war. Not one of them had ever acted before.
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What followed was an extraordinary moment of cross-cultural contact across millennia, in which women born in 20th century Syria found a blazingly vivid mirror of their own experiences in the stories of a queen, princesses and ordinary women like them, uprooted, enslaved,and bereaved by the Trojan War.
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It was a process charged with emotion and fraught with challenges, as long buried issues came to the surface, and at times the project itself hung in the balance.
Yasmin Fedda’s subtly crafted and beautifully shot film explores the difficult choices the women have to make about appearing on stage, and the close relationships they form within the group as they explore with each other their experiences. It shows their bravery and determination that their stories should be told to the world.
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The original production was invited to go on tour in the US and Switzerland, courtesy of Georgetown University in Washington DC, and Columbia University in New York, but sadly the casts visas were denied, so the tour was 'virtual' since unfortunately our original cast were unable to travel to the US as their visas were rejected. Listen here to the story on NPR. After we showed the trailer and some short clips from the documentary footage from 'Queens Of Syria', The inspirational cast of The Trojan Women received a standing ovation from a visibly moved Georgetown audience.Under the expert moderation and translation of Syrian broadcaster Honey Al Sayed, the cast, director and audience were able to have a discussion about the project, sharing experiences of participating in and of watching some of the performance. Despite thousands of miles and visa denials, the team at Georgetown enabled our cast to tell their stories and ask their questions, and gave the Washington audience a flavour of what (we hope!) is to come if visas are granted and a live performance is made possible.
You can discover more about the event in a report by Peter Marks in the Washington Post and also in a Foreign Policy article by Ambassador Cynthia Schneider, co-founder of the Georgetown Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.
Geneva
The Talberg Institute also hosted nine of the cast members to mount an abridged version of The Trojan Women at CERN in Switzerland.
The original production was invited to go on tour in the US and Switzerland, courtesy of Georgetown University in Washington DC, and Columbia University in New York, but sadly the casts visas were denied, so the tour was 'virtual' since unfortunately our original cast were unable to travel to the US as their visas were rejected. Listen here to the story on NPR. After we showed the trailer and some short clips from the documentary footage from 'Queens Of Syria', The inspirational cast of The Trojan Women received a standing ovation from a visibly moved Georgetown audience.Under the expert moderation and translation of Syrian broadcaster Honey Al Sayed, the cast, director and audience were able to have a discussion about the project, sharing experiences of participating in and of watching some of the performance. Despite thousands of miles and visa denials, the team at Georgetown enabled our cast to tell their stories and ask their questions, and gave the Washington audience a flavour of what (we hope!) is to come if visas are granted and a live performance is made possible.
You can discover more about the event in a report by Peter Marks in the Washington Post and also in a Foreign Policy article by Ambassador Cynthia Schneider, co-founder of the Georgetown Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.
Geneva
The Talberg Institute also hosted nine of the cast members to mount an abridged version of The Trojan Women at CERN in Switzerland.
The original production was invited to go on tour in the US and Switzerland, courtesy of Georgetown University in Washington DC, and Columbia University in New York, but sadly the casts visas were denied, so the tour was 'virtual' since unfortunately our original cast were unable to travel to the US as their visas were rejected. Listen here to the story on NPR. After we showed the trailer and some short clips from the documentary footage from 'Queens Of Syria', The inspirational cast of The Trojan Women received a standing ovation from a visibly moved Georgetown audience.Under the expert moderation and translation of Syrian broadcaster Honey Al Sayed, the cast, director and audience were able to have a discussion about the project, sharing experiences of participating in and of watching some of the performance. Despite thousands of miles and visa denials, the team at Georgetown enabled our cast to tell their stories and ask their questions, and gave the Washington audience a flavour of what (we hope!) is to come if visas are granted and a live performance is made possible.
You can discover more about the event in a report by Peter Marks in the Washington Post and also in a Foreign Policy article by Ambassador Cynthia Schneider, co-founder of the Georgetown Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.
Geneva
The Talberg Institute also hosted nine of the cast members to mount an abridged version of The Trojan Women at CERN in Switzerland.
In 2013 Refuge Productions in partnership with Oxfam mounted a new production of Euripides’ great anti war tragedy the Trojan Women in Jordan with a cast of Syrian refugee women displaced by the war in Syria. The production was intended both as a psycho-social support measure for the participants, and as an advocacy tool to highlight the plight of Syrian refugees. The women who participated arrived at the workshops in varying states of suffering from depression, feelings of isolation and PTSD. Without claiming that the production cured these, the Syrian psychologist we employed to monitor the workshops and rehearsals confirmed that the process allowed the women to take back a great measure of self confidence and self respect, as well as finding a new support group through sharing each others’ stories and experiences. In 2013 the refugee crisis engulfing the region as a result of the civil war in Syria was very under-reported internationally. We correctly projected that showing this crisis in a different and dramatically surprising way would have a much wider impact in reporting terms, and as such the play was widely covered by regional and international press both in newsprint and on television.



WHO WE ARE

Creating a platform for refugees to tell their own stories through drama
WHO WE ARE
The Trojan Women Project has been creating joint therapeutic drama and advocacy projects for refugees since 2013.
Trojan Women Project (Refuge Media CIC &Trojan Women SCO50525) was founded by Bosnia veterans, the award-winning foreign correspondent and film-maker Charlotte Eagar and her husband, the award-winning filmmaker William Stirling in 2013. Trojan Women Project was inspired by years of working with refugees and seeing the depression, loneliness, boredom and misery they can suffer in exile.
Previously we have worked with Syrian refugees in Jordan, Europe and the UK, but are now open to all refugees, Ukrainian, Afghan, Syrian, and whoever wants to come.
We also make films about our projects so as to allow the voices of our participants to be heard as widely as possible. These award-winning films have been broadcast on the BBC, shown at festivals, and are screened and studied at dozens of universities in the UK, US and Europe, allowing our participants to tell their stories all over the world.
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WHAT WE DO
The key to our project is producing pieces of drama and/or film which combine being of the highest possible artistic standard with being of benefit to both the refugee and host community participants.
Our core aims are helping refugees overcome isolation, trauma, depression and giving them a platform to tell their stories to their host communities as well as building links and trying to provide new professional and personal opportunities. We do this by producing a range of projects and mediums all over the UK.
Our Trojans UK project uses Euripides’ great anti-war text ‘The Trojan Women’ as a foundation to teach drama and story-telling techniques in a series of community drama workshops, exploring themes of displacement, war and resilience. We then build upon the testimonies shared by our participants to weave their contemporary lived experiences into the ancient text. Based on this creative concept, we produce ever evolving pieces of theatre which serve as a powerful reminder of the devastating physical and psychological effects of war, oppression, persecution and displacement.
By sharing these stories in public-facing performances, we strive to foster empathy and connection with host communities as well as making sure that the voices of those living on the margins of our society are heard and uplifted.
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CURRENT PROJECTS
The aim of Trojans UK, which we have been running since 2022, is a UK wide series of community drama workshops and local sharing performances, culminating in a major production.
We are currently running two Trojans UK workshop projects which will culminate in a public sharing, in Hounslow and Chelsea, and are about to start a third in Stirling in the spring. Each has been created to use drama and theatre to not only allow refugees and asylum seekers to share their stories, but also create a safe, positive space to alleviate the sense of hopelessness, loneliness and boredom that affects these marginalised communities.
To make our workshops accessible to all refugees, we provide travel allowances, free childcare, interpreters and a shared hot meal to encourage bonding and community building.
Our Hounslow project, backed by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, whose workshops have hosted over 100 people, will resume in mid-February 2025. In the meantime, Trojans UK Chelsea, supported by the National Lottery Community Fund, takes place fortnightly on Thursdays and continues to welcome participants.
Both workshops are open to all refugees and asylum seekers over 16, regardless of background or experience. You can find more information about the Chelsea workshops under the "What's On" tab: Trojans UK Chelsea.
We are backed by Prospero World, a UK registered charity, no. 1163952, who have supported and monitored our work since 2013.


OUR HIGHLIGHTS
We’ve been running this project since 2013 in Jordan, Europe and the UK, highlights include being a key-note feature of the Edinburgh International Culture Summit (2020, 2022), our four-star reviewed Edinburgh Festival 2019 performance of The Trojans, an adaptation of Euripides’ Trojan Women, with a cast of Glasgow-based Syrian refugees; the five-star reviewed Queens of Syria UK 2016 tour, co-produced with the Young Vic and Developing Artists; Oliver! in Arabic our highly acclaimed 2015 first ever Arabic adaptation of the musical, Oliver!, in Jordan, with a junior cast of Syrian refugees; our 2014-15 radio drama, We Are All Refugees/Welcome to Zaatari – written and performed by Syrian and Jordanian professionals and refugees, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Arabic; and 2013’s Syria: The Trojan Women, our original adaptation of Euripides’ with an all-female cast of Syrian refugees living in Jordan. During Covid we ran Enscripted, nine months of weekly on-line zoom black comedy workshops for Syrian refugee. Participants joined from all over the Middle East, Europe and the UK.
Academic Screenings
We frequently do screenings and Q&A’s at schools and universities in the UK, the US and Europe, and are studied on the syllabus at several US universities, including UCLA. We’ve done screenings at Oxford, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Godolphin and Latimer, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, University of Texas, Columbia, to name a few.







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