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.
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.
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.
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.
10 YEARS
2013
2023
TROJANS UK 22
A NEW ADAPTATION OF EURIPIDES’ ANTI-WAR TRAGEDY
THE TROJAN WOMEN
with a cast of UK-based Ukrainian, Afghan and Syrian refugees - professional actors and amateurs - and community hosts
TROJANS UK 22 AT THE PLAYGROUND THEATRE AND THE FT WEEKEND FESTIVAL
"Astonishing...deeply moving... magnificent"
"4 stars"
(Audience response)
Audiences warmly received both our K&C Festival Showing at Playground and our two showings at the FT Weekend Festival of our exciting new production of Euripides' great anti-war tragedy, The Trojan Women - adapted by the Ukrainian, Afghan and Syrian cast, with the help of the Trojan Women team.
The production - the pilot project of Trojans UK 22-23-24 - was the result of 12 weeks of Community Drama Workshops for Ukrainian, Syrian and Afghan refugees, supported by Kensington and Chelsea Council. The cast all worked their own stories into the text of the play.
The 'Showing' of our adaptation was first performed on 10th August at Playground Theatre, Latimer Road, London W10 6RQ - to rave reviews and a standing ovation.
The new drama project included a core cast of professional Ukrainian, and Syrian-Palestinian actors - all exiles from their homelands - Arwa Omarem, Valery Danko and Alina Venerchuk - as well as the British actors Emma Bugge and Grace Haydn. Other participants included Ukraine's World Food Ambassador, Yurii Kovryzhenko.
These actors - working with British theatre professional Amanda Waggott - led community drama workshops for Afghan, Ukrainian and Syrian refugee participants.
This was the first step in Trojans UK, our planned country-wide tour of performances alongside community drama workshops in every place we tour.
We also provided childcare for participant's children and a hot lunch. The project was monitored by a psychologist.
The aims were, as ever, to help refugees get over isolation, trauma and depression, to give them a platform to tell their stories to their host communities, to build links between refugees and their host communities and try to provide new professional and personal opportunities. The multi-lingual workshops also helped the participants learn English.
We intend to and have been touring this production and the accompanying drama workshops round the UK over 18 – 24 months.
SUPPORT THE TOUR
ABOUT TROJANS UK 22
The Pilot Project Has Begun!
We spearheaded this project in Kensington, London, partnering with SET Kensington, The Ukrainian Community Centre and various Afghan and Syrian refugee networks and The Playground Theatre, Latimer Road, W10, commissioned by K+C Festival.
In the pilot project, we ran weekly multi-lingual mixed gender drama workshops – with accompanying creche and hot meal - at SET Kensington for three months, for refugees and host community members. We worked with the highly respected Syrian actor Arwa Omaren, who came here as an asylum seeker herself, and two Ukrainian actors, Alina Venerchuk, who arrived a few weeks before the project, and Valery Danko.
Tour Workshops
Alongside the new adaptation, we will be running further ten weeks of multi-lingual weekly drama workshops with refugees and host community members in different regions of the country. At every location we tour, we will incorporate local refugee/host community workshop members and their stories into the cast of the play, after a week of intensive rehearsals in each location.
We are incorporating host communities into the workshops, in order to help migrants make friends and build bonds with host community members, rather than find themselves stuck in ghettoes.
We are also running a creche for the participants’ children and provide participants with a hot meal, to help them build community ties.
The Play Itself
On top of the workshops, we also had a one-off four weeks of rehearsals with the refugee/host community professional cast to create the core of the play. Subsequently, we will re-rehearse the play for a week in each location with local cast members, who will supply the chorus etc, and work their own stories into the play.
London Mini Tour
On the back of the pilot project, the immediate aim is to set up a London-wide mini-tour and community drama workshops. In 2023 we performed at the Chelsea Theatre, on the World's End Council Estate, SW7, and are talking to other councils, community centres and theatres in South London, East London and North London. The intention is that in every theatre we will produce a performance which relates to and includes the local community, in order to build bonds.
UK Tour
Building on the success of the project in London, our future intention is to roll the tour out country-wide, partnering with local councils and communities.
Why Do It This Way?
The reason for recreating the project in this way is to expand our reach, both of the psycho-social support workshops and the advocacy reach of the play itself. We have always had enormous demand to tour our plays, but it is almost impossible to tour a play with an amateur cast – they have their own lives and families. However, by incorporating a core cast of refugees/host community who are professional actors, and working with refugee/host community amateurs in each individual area, we will be able to overcome this challenge to create a powerful and emotive production, while staying true to the key aims of our project.