I've always been a believer in the power of theatre. National Theatre Live's marketing manager Victoria Murray once described it as "the last sacred space" - the final space remaining when we are no longer distracted by our phones, where that which is in front of us demands our attention for an hour or two, with nothing standing between actor and audience besides a script, a stage and a magical stretch of time.
Theatre is beautiful for its diversity, but every so often something comes along that stands out that little bit more. Maybe it pushes you that little bit further, makes you think or feel that little bit more. That's what The Jungle did for me.
The first thing to know about The Jungle is that this isn't any ordinary play; it didn't just begin its life in the mind of a playwright. It began in Calais, just 113 miles away from the shiny theatres of London's West End, where thousands of refugees and migrants have arrived on their search for safety in recent years, and where The Jungle refugee camp was born. Some 10,000 refugees lived there from July 2015 to October 2016, when the camp was destroyed by local authorities.
In October 2015, British playwrights Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy (commonly known simply as 'the Joes') made their way across the channel to learn more about the refugee crisis. They stumbled upon the camp in Calais, where they spent a week learning about life in the camp before making their way back to London to round up supplies. Another week later and back in Calais they were - this time with a large dome-shaped tent which they used to form The Jungle's very own theatre: Good Chance, a safe space where refugees could come together and share their stories. The theatre ran drama, music and art workshops, and was even supported by visiting theatre companies including Knee High and Shakespeare's Globe.
Following the destruction of The Jungle a year later, the Joes continued to run Good Chance, producing a nine-day arts festival in London named 'Encampment' and returning to France the following year to set up a temporary theatre in Paris. By the end of 2017, their debut play The Jungle, directed by Justin Martin and Stephen Daldry (The Crown, Billy Elliot, An Inspector Calls) and based on the Calais refugee camp, was being performed to sell-out audiences at London's Young Vic.
It's a cold December evening, and we enter the space at the Young Vic through a series of guided tunnels, each audience member directed a different way depending on their designated section, as dictated by their ticket. The Jungle in Calais was divided according to country - Afghanistan, Iran, Syria. My housemate and I are in Sudan. We make our way along long wooden tables lined with bottles of ketchup, representative of an Afghan cafe born from nothing in the camp, and perch on the edges of benches, surrounded by cushions, blankets and ledges where fellow audience members perch.
"Our emotion is placed in the centre of the action, where it remains loyally until the final bows"
The Jungle begins with the audience immediately placed directly in the action, as the happenings of the camp unfold around us. Audience members are addressed as campmates, served Afghan bread by Salar (Casualty's Ben Turner) from his cafe, and handed neatly folded clothes by a child refugee. Singing and dancing fills the spaces around the audience, and soon we are clapping along as members of the group - our emotion is placed in the centre of the action, where it remains loyally until the final bows.
The play runs at 2h45, but time seems to race by and I could easily watch it for twice as long (which is saying something coming from someone who struggles to get through anything longer than 2h30). There is never a moment when I feel disconnected from that which is happening around me; this is partly aided by the intimate staging that truly makes the audience part of the production, so close to the action that at times the actors are breathing, singing, yelling right beside you, and partly aided by the undeniably immense skill of every actor on the stage. Each moment is filled with intensity, whether that be sheer joy, anguish or downright rage - I feel my entire range of emotions packed into one evening - and some I didn't even know I had. The changes of pace are always executed at the perfect moment, with lights flicking back up to reality after particularly intense scenes, moving the action on swiftly to play contrast to the gravitas of that which was just played out. The joy feels all the more joyous and the sorrow all the more so, simply from the sheer contrast of the two placed side by side.
"Each moment is filled with intensity, whether that be sheer joy, anguish or downright rage"
The beauty of The Jungle is that everyone shines; there is no single star of the show. Instead, this is a glittering ensemble of experienced actors and debuting refugees alike. Turner plays the stage with some of the rawest emotion I've ever seen when the news comes through that a young Afghan boy, desperate to make it to the UK, has died on the tracks, while Ammar Haj Ahmad guides the audience through the play with perfect poise and thoughtful narration. The Jungle is not without humour, either - Alex Lawther and Trevor Fox's well-meaning British volunteers provide some much-needed comic relief, while playwrights Murphy and Robertson use these roles to tease out an intriguing debate on the utility of such volunteers.
The production is beautiful too, skilfully using torches, fairy lights and major shifts from bright white lighting to mere shadows to play the stage. The sound of song, instruments and the banging of drums and torches on the floor fills the room, creating joy and tension and everything in between, while the use of screens playing news reports brings the performance crashing down to reality.
The show is a triumph - there's no doubt about it. I left the theatre that night feeling devastated yet uplifted, and most of all changed. I wish that everyone in this city, everyone in this country, hell, everyone in this world could see it - and I can only hope the rumours of a London transfer are true.
The production is beautiful too, skilfully using torches, fairy lights and major shifts from bright white lighting to mere shadows to play the stage. The sound of song, instruments and the banging of drums and torches on the floor fills the room, creating joy and tension and everything in between, while the use of screens playing news reports brings the performance crashing down to reality.
The show is a triumph - there's no doubt about it. I left the theatre that night feeling devastated yet uplifted, and most of all changed. I wish that everyone in this city, everyone in this country, hell, everyone in this world could see it - and I can only hope the rumours of a London transfer are true.
The afternoon before seeing the production, I was also lucky enough to attend a roundtable discussion with the two Joes (who were coincidentally sat opposite me during the performance that night, subconsciously mouthing along to every word), where they spoke about their process writing the play, as well as their experiences building their temporary theatres of hope.
"We can't lose trust in people from other places, because after that, what do we have left as a society?"
The Jungle is about "telling personal stories and letting the audience make their own decision", they say of their play. Indeed, it is in no way pushing the audience to feel a certain way - it just exists as it is and as it was, leaving the audience to process the material in whatever way they see fit. Speaking meanwhile of the theatres they have built in Calais and now Paris, they explain that art is the best, most explorative way of meeting someone. Watching the actors singing and dancing down the aisles in the performance that evening, encouraging audience members to clap along to the beat of their drums, it certainly seems like they're on to something.
While it may be a political shift that's needed, the solution to this crisis shouldn't be political - it should be about people, Robertson says, asking both everyone and no one: "we can't lose trust in people from other places, because after that, what do we have left as a society?"
"We're full of hope though", he adds, after a short pause - and I very much believe him.
