PRESS COMMUNICATION 

DRAMA CENTRE WORK FOR REFUGEE DAY IN ANKARA

 PHOTO:  Sequence from the Drama Centre's production for  Refugee Day in Ankara.

A studio film on the transition and integration of refugees and asylum seekers,  produced by the Malta Drama Centre in collaboration with Education Channel 22, has been selected by UNHCR Turkey to be screened in Ankara on World Refugee Day, falling on June 20.

The work, Coming in from the Shadows  was written and directed by Mario Azzopardi with a group of actors from the Community Theatre section at the Centre and a number of guest artistes who interpreted key parts of the text, written in English.

In Ankara, the script has been translated into the local tongue after the Sustainable Solutions Department within UNHCR-Turkey expressed its interest in the Maltese product with Hydra International Project & Consultancy Company, a non-profit organization targeting issues like democratization and human rights, education, health, the environment, gender and the integration of  migrants.  Hydra is one of the partners in a European Union (Grundtvig) project involving Turkey, Malta, Italy, Austria, Germany and Lithuania.

The Malta Drama Centre worked on personal narratives collected from the different countries, based on real life experiences which asylum seekers had to face after before and after fleeing from impossible situations.  After conducting a series of exploratory workshops in Rome last February, Mr Azzopardi was asked to transform vital episodes from the migrants' biographies and turn them into dramatized sequences involving Maltese actors.

Hydra has reported that UNHCR Turkey was very impressed with the Maltese product when this was shown for the first time in Ankara to partners from the participating countries as well as social workers, theatre groups and learners interested in the access to education for people with migrant backgrounds.  The filmed version of Coming in from the Shadows which is being translated also into Italian, German and Lithuanian will be shown to ambassadors, municipal officers, NGOs, teachers, refugee representatives and other interested groups.

“The project has served the Drama Centre as an intercultural laboratory on an issue which hits even Malta with much impact, “explained  Mario Azzopardi, “while it has given us the opportunity to act as cultural mediators.”