SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA
★★★★ "It’s an honour to be the recipient of these women’s chronicles and the format creates a stimulating, confronting and eye-opening piece of theatre” - BEYOND THE CURTAIN
"Suppliants of Syria was impactful theatre. It was necessary theatre. I leave disturbed, but with heightened senses awoken from a recent complacency. Hearing the voices and stories of others remind us that democracy is not just an empty ideal, and that listening to others is in fact the very first democratic act." - LONDON FLO
★★★"Trauma is not aestheticised or consumed; it is held. Silence is used as deliberately as speech... You are not observing crisis from afar — you are sharing space with it." - EVERYTHING THEATRE
For over a decade, war in Syria had forced millions from their homes. Across Europe, displacement continued to be framed as a threat rather than a human reality. Borders tightened, the language around asylum grew more hostile, and the voices of refugees themselves remained unheard.
SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA began with the belief that this was not only a crisis of people, but also of the stories told about them.
Developed through a month-long collaboration with Syrian refugee women in Turkey, this interactive multimedia performance placed first-hand accounts of displacement at its core.
Filmed testimonies intertwined with music, movement, poetry and moments of humour, as performers Tobi King Bakare, Vlad Gurdis and Albie Marber created a live response to the voices on screen. Together, filmed and live elements formed a dialogue across time, gender and geography between those who cross borders and those who draw them.
A contemporary reimagining of Aeschylus’ Suppliants, the first drama to confront the politics of asylum, the work revealed how urgently these questions continued to resonate in the contemporary world.
At the centre of each performance there was a public debate, inviting audiences to take part in the questions the play itself could not resolve.
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