Suppliants of Syria: New London play blends Greek myth and Syrian refugee stories

This March, a new play devised by the multi-media theatre company, Border Crossings, will arrive at Hoxton Hall.

The production, SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA, blends The Suppliants, a 2,500-year-old Greek myth, with pre-recorded testimonials of Syrian women refugees living in Turkey.

As part of the performance, audience members will be able to participate in a live on-stage debate with the actors.

By inviting dialogue, the dynamic performance hopes to spark reflection and a changed perception towards asylum seekers. 

In an interview with The New Arab, Artistic Director Michael Walling discussed the urgency of reframing displacement amid anti-immigration sentiment, the process of bringing the play to life through a multicultural approach, and how theatre may succeed where politics has failed.  

Repurposing the 'frame of myth'

It seems as if the opening lines of The Suppliants, written by the Greek playwright Aeschylus in 463 BC, never lost their relevance:  

"Zeus Protector, protect us with care.  

From the subtle sand of the Nile delta  

Our ship set sail. And we deserted:  

From a holy precinct bordering Syria  

We fled into exile, condemned." 

The need to flee, combined with the prayer for protection and the reality of condemnation, remains a familiar experience for those seeking asylum across the world.

For Michael Walling, Artistic Director of Border Crossings, Aeschylus' play is an "extraordinary gift" because it allows us to "reimagine the crossings as a sacred drama in a way that is very helpful for human recognition." 

Back in 2018, Walling was involved in an EU-funded policy consultation, The Promised Land, held in Adana to explore how culture could respond to the so-called 'refugee crisis'.

Through that project, Walling met the Director of Migration and Development Research Center (MIGCU) at Çukurova University, Ilke Sanlier. Finding an overlap in their interests and feeling an urgent desire to respond directly to the growing negative reception against refugees, they decided to work together to develop a theatre piece that would aim to humanise refugee stories. 

Walling explains that the desire to repurpose Aeschylus’ myth was almost intuitive: "The way in which the small boat crossings in particular are being treated is an utter failure of the imagination, both by journalists and by politicians." The old myth, combined with present testimonials, therefore allowed him to take audiences "out of the immediate reality, and the minutiae of politics, dignifying what is happening, and recognising that it is deeply rooted in the beginning of our culture."  

In Aeschylus' original play, the fifty daughters of Danaus flee from Egypt to Argos to avoid a forced marriage with their Egyptian cousins. The King of Egypt, Pelasgus, asks the people of Argos if he should grant asylum to the Suppliants. In a similar fashion, SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA will open the discussion to the public, offering them a chance to air their own opinions about admitting and accommodating refugees in their own country. 

Walling explains: "The way in which most things are done nowadays is not dialoguing, it's very monological. As a result, you don't get an exchange; you just end up with positions becoming increasingly entrenched and separate from each other. Dialogue is an attempt to get us away from that. It's all about human contact." 

Border Crossing's own ethos of cultural exchange and participatory art performance reflects this, positioning community engagement over single-gaze storytelling: "The age of the single author is over. That's why our work tends to be developed communally, as a group."  

Sourcing testimonials: Meryem Women's Cooperative 

At the end of 2023, Walling and Lucy Dunkerley, Associate Director of Border Crossings, travelled to Turkey for a month to embed themselves in the country and build trust among the community.

During that time, a colleague introduced them to the Meryem Women's Cooperative (MWC), which was set up to improve the living conditions of refugees by creating work opportunities for them. 

The project, founded in 2020 in partnership with the Adana Metropolitan Municipality, was born out of the realisation that women were living in limbo. They came into Adana but had nothing to do and were unable to sustain their families, as they couldn't apply for jobs under Turkish law.

The MWC has grown since, and it now hosts a bakery, a greenhouse, a mushroom workshop, a fruit and vegetable drying plant, and a production base for face masks and visors. 

The women for the MWC were keen to share their story for SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA, as Walling explained, "They were over the moon that anyone was taking an interest in their story. Word got out amongst them, and there were people arriving, saying: 'I want to be part of this.'" 

However, there were other things to consider: "There are so many ethical problems around this kind of work," Walling continued, "if you pay people directly, are you buying their misery? But, if they're not being paid at all, are you exploiting them?" Therefore, from the beginning of the project, it was decided that the women at the MWC would be paid in the same way that they get paid for any other work they do in their community, which was "crucial" for the project, as it gave them the autonomy to tell their story, whilst being remunerated fairly for their contribution. 

With the aid of a translator, Dunkerley set up a range of workshops, including drama games and visualisations. The energy, Walling explains, was collaborative: "The mixture of languages in the room was one of the things that was very exciting about it. Some women spoke different degrees of English, and they would help each other out." 

Some of them shared stories that they hadn't even shared with each other, partly because they knew that this play would be performed outside of Turkey: "They understand London and other European spaces as places where some change can perhaps be engineered. They knew who they were talking to, which gave them a sense that it may actually do something." 

For Walling, working in Turkey and hearing the testimonials first-hand shifted his own perspective, a quality that he continues to embrace as the project continues to evolve: "The moment you hear a testimonial from another individual in the same room, you can no longer generalise refugees. That's the key to the whole thing. It's human awareness on a very immediate basis."

Bringing diverse voices into the room 

Walling truly believes in the power of participatory theatre to enact change. Recalling a previous project, he retells how a play created in collaboration with young refugees at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth a few years back, "actually made a change in the way the police were dealing with the people arriving on boats."  

Because of this, in addition to the performance, every show will be preceded by a dinner where local refugees will get a chance to talk to civic dignitaries, police, health and social workers, journalists and politicians: "The MWC women can't be there because they're not allowed to travel. But there are refugees who are very present in London, and we want to bring their voices into the room."

Walling explains that the goal of the play is not to provide conclusive answers: "We are aware of the questions. What we have to do is find ways in which we can understand one another's viewpoints."

By blending the multimedia performances with live debate, dance and music, the contemporary version of this ancient piece ultimately foregrounds the refugee's search for safety and dignity.  

His hope, Walling concludes, is for people to leave the performance with a desire to dig deeper, not just "sit on the surface, which is where we always want to be", and a "recognition that we're not dealing with statistics, we're dealing with human beings."  

Luisa De la Concha Montes is a visual artist, photographer and writer from Mexico City interested in digital art and culture. She holds an MA in Photography from the University of Sussex

Follow her on Instagram: @erst.while / @icon__clash