Asylum Monologues “.....imagine arriving in a foreign country, somewhere quite alien, like China for example, and being presented with a form, 19 pages long, in Chinese....you don’t even know where to buy a stamp or what a post office is..... your Chinese doesn’t extend beyond Dim Sum and MaoTze Tung......” The monologues are true stories of real people, highlighting not only events in their own countries that have forced them to flee, but their experiences of being asylum seekers in the UK. For National Refugee Week 2008 we were asked to produce the monologues as the centre piece of Bedford's activities. The script was developed by IceandFire Theatre Company who kindly gave us permission to perform it in Bedford.

We rehearsed for 5 days which was incredibly intense as the material is very hard hitting, but also a wonderful process as the actors worked brilliantly together, along with traditional African drummers Martin Hanson and Alfonse Hanson who both belong to the Osagyefo Theatre Company.

The evening was an overwhelming success, we played to a full house and followed the performance with a discussion session between actors, audience and an invited panel of "experts" who are or work with refugees and asylum seekers in the Eastern Region of the UK.