An eye for an eye. It's very simple. You choose your homeland like a hyena picking and choosing where he steals his next meal from. Scavenger. Yes you grovel to the feet of Mengistu and when his people spit at you and kick you from the bowl you scuttle across the border. Scavenger.
As a violent civil war rages back home in Ethiopia, teenager Alem and his father are in a bed and breakfast in Berkshire. It's his best holiday ever. The next morning his father is gone and has left a note explaining that he and his mother want to protect Alem from the war. This strange grey country of England is now his home.
On his own, and in the hands of the social services and the Refugee Council, Alem lives from letter to letter, waiting to hear something from his father. Then he meets car-obsessed Mustapha, the lovely 'out-of-your-league' Ruth and dangerous Sweeney – three unexpected allies who spur him on in his fight to be seen as more than just the Refugee Boy.
Lemn Sissay's remarkable stage adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah's bestselling novel is published here in the Methuen Drama Student Edition series, featuring commentary & notes by Professor Lynette Goddard (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) that help the student unpack the play's themes, language, structure and production history to date.
A high-profile international author with an enormous breadth of appeal, Benjamin Zephaniah was perhaps best known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults and ground-breaking performance poetry for children. Alongside his poetry he created novels and plays, wrote and performed music and had a recurring role as preacher Jeremiah Jesus in the BBC series
Peaky Blinders. In his novels for young people, which include
Face,
Refugee Boy,
Gangsta Rap and
Teacher's Dead, Zephaniah tackled vital themes that resonate as much today as they did upon their first publication.
Lemn Sissay is author of five books of poetry and has appeared in many anthologies. He reads poetry on stages throughout the world. He is an honorary Doctor of Letters and was awarded the 2010 travelling award scholarship from the Society of Authors. His play Something Dark, directed by John McGrath, was the winner of a Race in the Media Award (RIMA). Internal Flight is a television documentary about his life in care and subsequent journey to Ethiopia where he found his family, made by the BBC.
Sissay is associate artist at Southbank Centre, Europe's largest arts complex. Sissay curated the world's first Literature Festival of the Sea. His Landmark Poems are displayed on the walls and streets of Manchester and London. In London they adorn the Royal Festival Hall; “Gilt of Cain”, commissioned by City of London was erected near Fenchurch Street Station and was unveiled by Bishop Desmond Tutu. He was the first poet to write for the London Olympics 2012 and his poem “Spark Catchers” remains onsite today. Lemn is patron of the Reader Organisation and the Letterbox Club. He is education ambassador for the Arvon Foundation and Trustee of World Book Night. All details can be found at http://www.lemnsissay.com
Lynette Goddard is Professor of Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.
Jenny Stevens was an Associate Lecturer for the Open University and currently combines educational consultancy work with teaching and writing. She is the co-author with Pamela Bickley of
Essential Shakespeare: The Arden Guide to Text and Interpretation (2013) and
Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama: Text and Performance (2016).
Chris Megson is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has taught and published widely in the field of modern drama, and is editor of
The Methuen Drama Book of Naturalist Plays. Other works include:
Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (with Alison Forsyth, 2011),
and
Modern British Playwriting: The 70s: Voices, Documents, New Interpretations (2012).
