Tickets £6 (£4 concessions)

To reserve your tickets phone the box office on 020 8296 9012. If you are unable to pay the ticket price, then Kingston Amnesty will pay for a limited number of free tickets (please contact Paschal Egan tel 07902 253720). info www.thecornerhouse.org

A short reading as part of ‘Shut Down Guantánamo! – candlelight vigil: 5th anniversary special’ organised by London Guantanamo Campaign.

It does distress me that in the anonymous world of log postings and responses, when the boundaries of social niceties are removed and people can say what they think without being judged personally, that so many of our fellow human beings reveal themselves to be spiteful and mean.

A recent example is when iceandfire uploaded a video onto Youtube, a film we made for the Children’s Society’s OutCry! Campaign. Within about 12 hours, there was a comment on the video: “NOT! immigrations. A illegal immigrations. SEND ALL illegal immigration BACK TO THERE COUNTRY!” From @jackfire55.

This is obviously offensive on a number of levels, not least because of the appalling spelling/grammar (English people who complain about foreigners should at least be able to write proper English!) But I didn’t know whether iceandfire should write a response?

I had a similar experience on a personal level, when I tweeted that I couldn’t help observing that people who go on marches for the English Defence League (EDL) often hide their faces, perhaps this means they know that they’re on the wrong side of the argument! Someone I don’t know immediately responded saying I was naïve and that the reason these extremist’s hide their identity is because “they don’t want to end up like Theo Van Gough” – the Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by an Islamic extremist in 2004.

I’m pretty sure that’s not the reason. I know my comment was somewhat flippant, but I think it far more likely that EDL supporters hide their identity because they don’t want to be identified by the media (and thus have their friends and work colleagues find out that they’re a member of the EDL) and by the police, because they might have a criminal record. However, the thought of getting into a debate with a stranger (who was very possibly an EDL supporter) about this issue really didn’t appeal so I didn’t respond. Even though I felt confident in my argument.

Was I wrong to let it go? Perhaps these ideas should be challenged in any space – whether it’s cyber or real. It’s something about the anonymity online – and the vitriolic, nasty way in which people write comments on articles and videos – that makes me reluctant to engage with it. But then I wonder that they get away with that behaviour?

Ironically, I’m asking for your comments…

By Charlotte George, Media & Communications Officer

The only “cost” for iceandfire is the inclusion of Amazon’s logo on our website. Which, I think, does have some ethical considerations. The issue of corporate sponsorship and donations is something of a minefield – just ask the organisers of the BP Portrait Award! But it is also increasingly important for all charities and arts groups as other funding options get cut away.

But how do you decide where the line is drawn? To what extent should a charity sell its soul?

I went to a seminar on “philanthrocapitalism” (try saying that 10 times as quickly as possible!) a few months ago. There were a number of speakers, mostly from the corporate world, but the representative of the third sector was Camila Batmanghelidjh, director and founder of Kids Company. Camila was inspiring, her observations that the corporate sector wield their power over charities and aren’t interested in actually creating real partnerships rang true. However, her proclamations that corporations should support charitable work – not because they will get anything out of it financially or in terms of PR, but because capitalism ruins the world (I’m paraphrasing) and charities have to pick up the pieces – while I agree with her, it felt… not naïve, that’s inaccurate. I’m sure Camila is aware that what should happen is not the same as what will happen. But it doesn’t help answer the question of how far we must go to raise money for good causes, because sadly the world isn’t like that. The corporate leaders at this seminar were unimpressed with the suggestion that they owed the third sector anything and that they should trust NGOs and charities to do what they know is best, rather than what will look best for their corporate sponsor.

The seminar drilled home for me the fact that whoever has the money has the power in a capitalist world. People aren’t rewarded for their righteousness or goodness. And I applaud Camila Batmanghelidjh for at least trying to fight against it, because not buying into the concept that we are beholden to big corporations and money is important. And telling the business world, and governments, and the people, that there is/could/should be a better way, if only we are willing to explore it and discuss how we want our society to operate.

In the meantime, until capitalism is overthrown and iceandfire runs the world, I guess we’re happy to have Amazon’s logo on our website. But we’ll probably avoid taking money from Shell Oil.

By Charlotte George, Media & Communications Officer

‘You who live safe in your warm houses, you who find, returning in the evening, hot food and friendly faces, consider if this is a man…’

These opening lines of the Primo Levi poem that prefaces his book If This Is A Man, came into my head as I

Launch on 28th July, Photo by Paul Robinson

prepared to go on the platform at Wilton’s Music Hall after the premiere performance of On A Clear Day You Can See Dover. For here we were, 300 of us, sitting on chairs, not a patch of ashphalt, enclosed by four walls and a ceiling, not exposed to the wind or the rain, with food and drink to hand, to be eaten with dignity, not to speak of pleasure. All a far cry from the conditions of the 300 or so young men and boys I had witnessed crouching in the rain, as they ate their food handouts, before walking off into the night to find somewhere to sleep at the mercy both of the elements and the notorious French riot police.

The incongruity of this elegant setting, a place built for music and laughter, and the warm reception given to their desperate stories, struck me most forcibly when I listened to Lily Boillet, sitting next to me on the platform. As a French activist, she had come straight from the asylum frontline . Her organisation, Terre d’Errance (World of Wandering) supports an encampment of migrants, a floating population of about 25 people, currently mosly from Eritrea, all intent on reaching the Promised Land of Great Britain. I had visited this ‘ camp’ near her village, just south of Calais, a cluster of makeshift tents on the side of a field, and heard the hopes and dreams of some of its traumatised inhabitants. And now their voices and Lily’s along with other ‘noble’ French people who are defying their governments edicts to withhold help and shelter from refugees and migrants, were being heard.

Q&A with Jean Lambert MEP, Sonja Linden and Lily Boillet. Photo by Paul Robinson

It was a moving culmination of my trips to Calais and the surrounding countryside, an act of vindication and witness. But just hours before the performance one of the people I had interviewed called me from Campsfield Removal Centre near Oxford, to tell me he was about to be deported back to Greece, the first European country he had arrived in after a tortuous journey from his native Iran. He had hung under the chassis of  a lorry for four hours in his bid to get to the UK, for which privilege he had he paid a smuggler 1300 euros. And now, for the second time since his arrival here, he was being threatened with removal, despite strong evidence of his torture and imprisonment as an opposition activist in Iran. A mass e-mail to all the audience members the next day urging them to send letters of appeal to the the British government and British Airways, met with a strong response and at the eleventh hour his deportation was stopped by a judge.

A small victory for human rights – a drop in the vast ocean of injustice meted out against refugees and asylum seekers, but one that iceandfire are proud to have contributed to. Electronic media such as OneWorld and Open Democracy both included this postscript in their accounts of the evening, adding their voices to the outcry. Which brings me back to the Primo Levi poem. In just six lines he sketches in the inhumanity he and others suffered in the Nazi concentration camps. But telling the story to his readers is not enough, in addition he urges them to ‘Meditate that this came about.’

‘I commend these words to you / Carve them in your hearts / At home, in the streets/ Going to bed, rising / Repeat them to your children.’

This is the imperative that drives me to communicate these stories . It is at the heart of our work at iceandfire. And when audiences respond in the powerful way that so many of them did that night, there is a chink of hope that ‘bearing witness’ can have some effect.

By Sonja Linden, Founding Artistic Director, iceandfire

“iceandfire theatre is seeking interviews with Londoners who are living in poverty (on low wages, long-term unemployed, homeless, living in temporary accommodation) who would like their stories to be told. £40 cash offered. Anonymity guaranteed.”

The response was immediate and overwhelming. Many more people than we have the capacity to speak with got in touch. Since April, we have conducted 30 in-depth face-to-face interviews with some of the respondents. As part of the work we are doing with Trust for London, we are interested in building a human profile of what poverty in London looks and feels like. Some of these stories will be included in our outreach script Broke, which is regularly updated. Some will inspire a new piece of theatre we are planning for the summer of 2011. Over the next few months, we’ll be blogging about some of the people we’ve met. Today, we’ll hear from ‘Brian’ in his own words.

Brian is a 31 year old man who grew up in Manchester and has lived in London for eight years. After being in constant employment in catering and jewellery industries, he found himself without work in 2008 and became homeless.

“I ran out of money and everything, it was unbelievable. It was my lowest point, well apart from my mum passing away, it was equal to that. I mean gosh it’s so hard to describe. I can still remember my first night sleeping rough, even though it was over a year ago. It was so new to me, something that I hadn’t planned for. It was very scary and stressful. I went to the train station and just tried to hang around central. And I couldn’t sleep outside that’s why I ended up sleeping on buses in the end. You sit on it for an hour and a half until the driver tells you to get off then you get on another one, and try to sleep in between.

“I woke up every morning for a year constantly stressed out. I had nowhere to go. I mean I didn’t know anything about homelessness and there’s not much help, I mean there is a bit but you have to dig deep to get it. I couldn’t tell my family, I was too ashamed. I just didn’t say anything about it. Just pretended everything was fine. Deep down inside you know you’re going to get through it so you have to remain strong and positive.

“In the last few years I haven’t been able to find anything steady. I occasionally work for an agency, doing temporary factory work and leafleting but not much. I’m living in a hostel right now. All I want is a good job, maybe become a supervisor or something in an area that I’ve already worked in, but mainly just to be happy really with my girlfriend. The homelessness hasn’t really prevented me having girlfriends funnily enough! I just wish people be a bit more open-minded because it really can happen to anyone.”

The shame Brian feels about his situation is echoed in many of the stories we have heard. Most of the interviewees are very aware of the stigma attached to living in poverty – i.e., if you’re in that situation it’s your own fault, you’re lazy, you’re not trying hard enough, etc. By telling their stories, they (and we) are hope to undermine some of those assumptions.

By Christine Bacon, Artistic Director

Hmmm, terrible for whom, Mr Loaf? Terrible for us, not having the gift of your divine musicality in its full LP glory, or terrible for you as you realise that your bank balance is forcing you to bow to your greater masters, the fickle and devious audience, and actually provide what they want? Because, you see, not everybody wants to sit through an hour and a half of self-indulgent waffle to get to the three or four songs that they actually like, so what’s the harm? – you might, in fact introduce new listeners who may not have bought your album but actually quite like your single (my dad being case in point).

And yet I realise that through my chastisement, I am actually bringing myself to account. You see, we thespian and arty types have an elevated sense of nobility about the work we present (particularly yours truly) – how can we not when we share our ancestry with Aeschylus, Ovid, Sir Shake of Speare, Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht, Beckett, Pinter, Hare; even Messers Gilbert, Sullivan, Bennett and Ayckbourn? Furthermore, art in general, and to me theatre in particular, have an unequalled talent for inspiring, educating, uplifting, calming, angering, galvanising; awakening the visceral beast within to ultimately affect change. Yes, when you pare everything else away, we are trying to change the world, even on a minute scale. And yet on my list, I have missed out perhaps the most important quality of all – the ability to entertain.

This factor is our lifeline and our nemesis. For what else is theatre’s sole purpose if not entertainment, even sombre entertainment? We pack our audience in to vacuous pantos, musicals, farces, hoping that some may spill out and seek depth in our poignant dramas and satirical comedies. We know you actually, really, honestly, truly, do want to see high-brow and cultured work. You see, we (in the immortal lines of the Fast Show) are “considerably insightfuller than yaoooow”. We know what is good for you, we know what you need to make your life richer and with greater depth, we know how to make things better…. Don’t we?

And yet where is the line between demand and supply? Arts often justify public spending on the intangible benefits: sense of wellbeing, awareness, social cohesion etc but is that what people are seeking when they turn on Britain’s Got Talent or visit the latest ‘jukebox’ musical? Or do they just want escapism for an hour or so, after another hectic day?

But if we succumb to pure audience vs profit anaylsis, are we to see a rise in cheap made-to-measure TV talent contests in place of challenging theatre? And with the impending cuts that loom above every industry’s head, do we go with what the audience want or what we want?

I think there is a fine line to be trod when programming or creating work – especially for iceandfire, as we would hate to be deemed polemic, pedagogic or patronising but it is our mission to provide a voice for those stories that need to be told, but may not want to be heard by Joe Public. And the way to do that without alienation is to be truly artful – to mesmerise and capture the hearts of our audience in a way they won’t experience just reading an article in the paper. Since joining the team, I’ve only caught a handful of the shows and pieces…. but each time I’ve come out with misty eyes, and I’m not the only one. And, honestly, I’m grateful for the experience no matter how heart-wrenching.

So find solace, Meatloaf, art is not dead after all.

By Lil Binham, Administrator

‘How come Mary got moved all over the country and put in prison?’

As we squeezed one more group onto the tables at the back, closing the doors on the 130 people packed into the room, it was clear the word about this show had spread far and wide. As the home of Actors for Human Rights North, Sheffield has seen its fair share of AFHR plays by now, but it’s clear that this diverse city still has audiences to be found. One new audience member posed the question ‘How come Mary got moved all over the country and put in prison?’ I’m always happy to hear questions such as these as it means we’re not just preaching to the converted (I’d be happier if the question was no longer needed…!) How to find a succinct answer? Gina Clayton one of the post show speakers and author of Textbook on Immigration and Asylum Law gave a clear response: ‘these people get caught up in a system that is broken down’. At the heart of what we do with Actors for Human Rights is bringing the voices affected by these ‘broken down systems’ to audiences encouraging them to think about what they can do to help. The other panel speaker, Sam, who is an active volunteer in Sheffield talked to the audience about ways of taking action such as volunteering with CDAS, Conversation Clubs, ASSIST, City of Sanctuary and how the smallest efforts can go a very long way. Looking round the room at the end with everyone eagerly studying their copy of 12 Things You Can Do it seems clear that these voices were inspiring.

Asylum Dialogues @ All Saints Church, Winterton, Scunthorpe, 21.04.2010

‘We don’t meet people like that around here.’

Tonight’s performance was, according to this audience in Winterton, ‘a real eye opener’. I think that’s about the best feedback we can get. Providing for perhaps the first time ever, a real insight into the lived experience of the UK asylum system and forging connections between vastly different parts of the community. Whilst Hull, a major city of dispersal for asylum seekers is only 17 miles away from Winterton, it is according to one audience member, ‘another universe’. Not that the people of Winterton are blind to the affairs of the world. The Q&A indicated there was a fair share of Guardian readers in the audience, and they had asked us to bring the Dialogues to them based on their concern for refugees, but few had previously encountered face to face a person who is going through that experience or heard in their own words what it was like. The real ‘John’ whose story features in Asylum Dialogues, attended last night and spoke after the reading about just how little he had known about the lives of refugees until he met Angela, a Jamaican woman who was the cleaner in his office who has now become his dear friend. He talked about his life radically changing when he realised the injustices she was enduring and how he now tours the country urging others to show similar support to those seeking sanctuary here. Whilst this was a long way from bright city lights or grand theatre stages, it was for me, the actors and the audience, Actors for Human Rights at its most useful.

Asylum Dialogues @ Manchester Uni, 29.04.2010

‘Befriend a refugee, what’s that? Like invite them to your house?’

At 7pm, before anyone had turned up to this dank, musty nightclub room, on a cold rainy night, smack bang in the middle of exams prep time, I thought ‘Here we go. We’ll get 20 maximum, keen students already on side’… I was wrong. 60 people turned up, and when I asked the audience to raise a hand if they were already part of with the Student Action For Refugees group only three hands shot up! During the pre-show mill around, someone reading our 12 Things You Can Do Document muttered, ‘Befriend a refugee, what’s that? Like invite them to your house?’ By the end of the show, that same person was chatting with Dave from BOAZ Trust about doing just that, befriending and supporting destitute asylum seekers through BOAZ Trust’s destitution project. And lots of other connections were made too, people chatting to woman from Community Arts North West about volunteering with their Exodus Festival, someone chatting with a person from the Red Cross about volunteering in their night shelter.

So from Manchester to Winterton and in between, over this past week we’ve communicated the inspiring voices of Asylum Dialogues to wide-ranging audiences reminding me just why Actors for Human Rights is so useful and just how lucky I am to be a part of it.

By Clea Langton, Regional Co-Ordinator, Actors for Human Rights

Throughout the process of researching and writing the script, we have tried to remain as true as possible to the journalists who will be represented in the play. Now, in this re-drafting, our duty must be to the audience and hopefully this will lead us to be as adventurous and as imaginative as we can be with the material and stories that we have settled on and not fall into the trap of believing that simply because what has happened to the main characters is true, it must be interesting. Listening to David Hare’s recent lecture at the Royal Society of Literature, I was struck by his observation along these lines:

‘”This is based on a true story” … functions as a kind of prophylactic, a way of protecting the subsequent proceedings from undue criticism. By declaring in advance that something is true, the film-makers seek to absolve themselves from the highest demands of art.’

And while it is a somewhat intimidating prospect to be daring and experimental with the stories of people for whom we have the highest regard, we also know that without holding ourselves to the standards Hare speaks of, we will probably end up with a small play about interesting people. So, now for the challenge ahead. Let the re-imagining, re-structuring, debate, experimentation and sleepless nights ensue.

By Christine Bacon, iceandfire co-Artistic Director, and Noah Birksted-Breen, playwright and director

I was very interested. I made notes. I thought about how important it is for the management of companies like ours to be aware of the value of branding. I justified that it was ok for people like me to feel this necessity so that people like Sara and Christine don’t need to, and the art can remain ‘pure’.

But, the more the panel spoke, the more I became aware that the arts are moving rapidly towards a model set by the sports industry where public and charitable funding is supported – superseded? – by corporate sponsorship. We are used to seeing the logos of sponsors on football shirts, F1 helmets, golf clubs but is this something we really want in our world? We already have the Orange BAFTAS, what’s next, the Blackberry Barbican and the Apple Ambassadors Theatre Group? A fruity funding fiasco, indeed.

Do we really want to be part of a system where the rules between giving and control are so blurred? Notice how during press junkets the ‘stars’ are conspicuously drinking from a branded cup – I’m always bemused at how beneficial a sugary pop would be after a match, versus a nice isotonic over ice. And where does that end? What if the Old Vic were sponsored by Innocent Smoothies and Kevin Spacey was papped swilling his mouth with PJs during rehearsals? Shock, horror, and possible retraction of some dosh?

I admit, I am probably overreacting to something that a) I don’t fully understand, b) is unlikely to ever escalate to such levels and c) is in its elementary stages the essential lifeline to ailing cashflows as we move into (hopeful) economic recovery. But to me there seems to be an even more obvious solution that is evading at least 2 of the 3 boys taking up all the headlines at the moment.

No, it’s not innovative, it’s not even particularly modern. It’s called PUBLIC FUNDING. Now I know Education, Welfare, NHS, Pensions etc are what people really care about, and honestly, will be at the forefront of my mind come May 6th, but when the total spend of one industry matches only 1% of the overall NHS budget and 0.3% of total government spend, really what good is knocking off 20% (as Local Authorities are warning) going to do to help the public coffers?

Knocking a million or so off the culture budget of Hampshire County Council isn’t going to help get us out of debt, but would be enough to fund at least 5 mid-scale theatre companies and have a bit spare for an arts officer to co-ordinate their ventures into the community. And it’s this unquantifiable, nebulous ripple of benefit that makes our industry so darned important. The power of art to provoke, inspire, ponder, energise and galvanise is unequivocal and was the reason the Arts Council was created in the 1940s to sustain the cultural heritage of which we should all feel fuzzy and proud.

The theatre industry is a shining beacon of productivity for the GDP and any government that thinks they can claw back a little cream and not create a poorer cultural economy is foolish. And the thing is, central government may understand this, but as it trickles down to local offices it’s more difficult to justify – when faced with the choice between budgeting for pot-holes or promenade theatre, who would ever choose the latter?

Maybe I should look at that Sponsorship pack again.

By Lil Binham, Administrator, iceandfire