Michael knows lots about Stephanie. He knows that she works in a bank, lives in a big house by herself in London and is always losing things. Stephanie doesn’t know anything about Michael. She doesn’t know that he is a refused asylum seeker from Eritrea, has spent a year and a half living rough, and for the last six weeks has been living in her spare room. Stephanie doesn’t even know Michael exists. That is, until today.
This is the premise of my new play The Spare Room. In part, it’s inspired by the Stop Destitution campaign by Scottish Refugee Council. The tension exists between what Stephanie thinks she knows about Michael’s situation and what she is prepared to do about it.
It dramatises my own questions about the issue of destitution amongst the refugee and asylum seeker population in the UK. How does it happen? Why? Is there something wrong with the whole system of asylum?
The play poses the question of what is Stephanie’s responsibility, as a citizen of a wealthy and peaceful nation, to Michael, a stranger on our shores. Is it her problem at all?
The German playwright Ernst Toller once wrote: ‘Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so’.
The SRC’s campaign and, in a small way, I hope, my play offers people a chance to imagine and to create change.
The Spare Room was commissioned in response to Glasgow Caledonian University’s research report ‘Trapped: destitution and asylum in Scotland’ and Scottish Refugee Council and Refugee Survival Trust’s Stop Destitution campaign. Written by Oliver Emanuel, it is directed by Lu Kemp and stars Babou Ceesay and Candida Benson, it is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Friday 22nd February at 2.15pm.
To support our Stop Destitution campaign sign our petition or read the research, co-commissioned by Scottish Refugee Council.
