All images ©David Sandison
This is the place people suffered and dreamed.
Okot wants nothing more than to get to the UK. Beth wants nothing more than to help him. Meet the hopeful, resilient residents of “The Jungle”– just across the Channel, right on our doorstep. Join refugees and volunteers from around the world over fresh baked naan and sweet milky chai at the Afghan Café. From Good Chance Theatre, a new play where worlds collide. In the worst places, you meet the best people.
The Young Vic and National Theatre co-production of The Jungle is written by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, the founders of Good Chance theatre.
The KT Wong Foundation is the Principal Production Supporter. 10% of tickets for The Jungle will be reserved for refugees to see the play.
Stephen Daldry will direct the production, inspired by the playwrights’ experiences working with refugees, which will show in the theatre’s main house from December 7, to January 6, 2018.
Murphy said: “The play is obviously about many things, but the main thing was about hope. It is about the difficulties that arise when we try and help different kinds of people.
“The Jungle was a complicated place and Good Chance never said ‘this is what we think politically’ – instead we are seeking to examine different attitudes. We want our audiences to come from as many perspectives as possible and not to think of this as a ‘liberal luvvie play’.”
Robertson added: “There couldn’t be a place that is more divisive and polarised than the Jungle, we all think we know something about it whether that is the terrible conditions or something else.
“In the seven months we lived there we saw a different side, volunteers coming together and building something, the structures of a society forming.”