“I would like to ask the British what visa they had when they ruled us for 150 years?”
Britain colonised 25% of the Earth’s land surface, subjugated 500 million people and justified the mass violence as a civilising mission. In the UK, migrants, refugees and those seeking asylum are scapegoated, detained without charge, interrogated, forced into destitution, deported without warning, suffocated, beaten and pushed to suicide by the British State’s anti-immigration and anti-asylum policies.
ILLEGALISED, from British-Romanian collective BÉZNĂ Theatre, is a journey through the Home Office’s human rights abuses against ‘the other’ that exposes the immigration-industrial complex and the profit made from the illegalisation of human beings.
ILLEGALISED, inspired and informed by interviews with migrants, refugees and those seeking asylum, is the first part of a protest cycle denouncing Britain’s dehumanising of people for power and profit from colonial times to today.
ILLEGALISED is protest-theatre calling for solidarity.
Supported by Arts Council England, Northern Stage, Applecart Arts, Lewisham Refugee and Migrant Network, Bookmarks, Work Rights Centre and Unity Theatre Trust.
Age restriction: 16+
About the company
BÉZNĂ Theatre is an award-winning, critically acclaimed British-Romanian interventionist theatre collective formed by theatre directors, playwrights and activists Sînziana Koenig and Nico Vaccari, united by the need to make bold political theatre that investigates societal inequalities and confronts institutionalised and normalised violences. All BÉZNĂ productions are made in consultation with activists and experts and accompanied by acts of interventionist-activism. BÉZNĂ consider theatre a powerful platform for provoking grassroots activism, promoting empathy and empowering audiences to demand change.
They believe that political and social theatre is a necessary tool in forming audiences’ political education and that it is their right to see it. That is why their tickets are priced at £10.20, or the equivalent of 1 hour of Living Wage in London. They see this as an essential step in igniting grassroots activism through their practice and is in recognition of the fact that their work in Romania is free.
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