Stephen Daldry on bringing theatre to the Calais 'Jungle' refugee camp

On Saturday evenings, the Joes would encourage people from the camp to tell stories, perform sketches, songs or short plays. They were big communal events — Shakespeare, poetry slams, stand-up comedy, whatever it took to put on a great show. People would share their memories of getting on boats, tales of the best way to get on to lorries and the worst ways as well, the attitude of the French police, tear gas and being beaten up. People would talk about their homelands: the flowers in their gardens, their mothers. The Syrians in particular would talk of the world they’d lost forever. One Afghan man, Misbah, who was deaf, mimed his journey and for once, with all the different languages spoken in the camp, everyone was able to understand.

For anybody going to the camp, it’s shocking, and it’s shocking for a number of reasons. The physical conditions were terrible. I’ve been to refugee camps before but I’ve never seen anywhere quite so desperate. What hits you first is the mud and the squalor of those tiny holiday tents, piled on top of each other for months, with people’s heads looking out at you. There are rats and rubbish everywhere, while people are forced to wash not just their feet, but their faces and private parts in public. What I remember most, in the end, was the unaccompanied minors. For a lot of those children, the theatre did become a surrogate home. It became alarming that there were only two organisations looking after young people: Liz Clegg’s women’s and children’s centre, and the theatre.

It was also shocking because you could buy a coffee at King’s Cross and within an hour on the train, you’d be walking into the camp and your coffee would still be warm. That’s how close it was to London and to Paris. How could such a place exist between two of the richest countries in the world? The lack of state support meant people were allowed to exist without any civilised sanitation, without decent water and with just a few disgusting toilets. The only people on the ground were volunteers.

Of course, it’s easy to be cynical about a theatre setting up in Calais. And in a way, the cynics are absolutely right. Refugees need clean water and they need basic food and they need medical supplies — without that, there is nothing. But they also need a space to think, and they need to hope and they need to dream. To acknowledge their humanity felt as important to us as the basic needs of food, shelter, medical equipment and sanitation. To allow those people to live as animals feels immoral in a Western democracy.

Following the camp clearance late last month, the original Jungle theatre space no longer exists. But Good Chance, now a registered charity which I chair, has formed very strong relationships with a number of refugee organisations and conversations about where to go next are active. During the summer, Encampment festival on the South Bank brought together different organisations working with refugees with its programme of theatre, art, music and workshops, and there’s talk of taking that idea around the UK, particularly to towns where the refugee or migrant community is very large, in the hope of bringing people together.

The Joes have also been commissioned by the National Theatre to write a play in conjunction with the Good Chance theatre regarding their experience. It’s called The Jungle and we’ve done a few workshops involving a lot of the refugees and migrants who’ve been through the Jungle and managed to find a way to this country.

British theatre has always been engaged in the social agenda of the day. It is not the intention of Good Chance to have an impact on government policy — it is a humanitarian organisation, not a political one. Although, inevitably, when it came to the unaccompanied minors, the Good Chance centre was heavily involved in focusing on the international law to which the British Government seemed not to be adhering.

The stories are always going to be distressing, but what was equally moving was the response from all walks of life: from Help Refugees and Care4Calais to Citizens UK; from the different Islamic community groups that came from Britain to the Women’s Institute from Kent; and from school kids to old ladies with their cakes to the community church groups. There was a Dunkirk spirit of the best of British coming together after seeing something that appalling and responding with a spirit of generosity and concern to help those most vulnerable.

Stephen Daldry is a multiple award-winning director in theatre and film, and chair of the Good Chance Theatre Trust. His revival of ‘An Inspector Calls’ opened this month at the Playhouse Theatre.