Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Ben Lowes-Smith talks to disabled Syrian refugee Hamzeh Al Hussien, whose remarkable story is brought to life with the help of Newcastle theatre company Curious Monkey
Image: Hamzeh Al Hussien in Penguin
Hamzeh Al Hussien is a disabled theatre maker who arrived in Gateshead five years ago as part of the UK’s Syrian Resettlement Programme. He was first introduced to performing during his six years in Za’atari refugee camp where he trained with a Spanish NGO in physical theatre. Having started working with Curious Monkey’s ongoing creative project for people seeking sanctuary in 2018, he recently graduated from Gateshead College with a Higher National Diploma in Performing Arts, and wrote his first show Penguin, which is about to go on tour in the UK, with performances at Newcastle’s Live Theatre from Wednesday 20th-Saturday 23rd September and Arts Centre Washington on Thursday 30th November.
Hamzeh explains how happily organic the process of putting the play together was. “I arrived in the UK in 2018. I met a support worker through the resettlement team in Newcastle, and told her about my performing history in Za’atari camp in Jordan, where I made mime shows and taught drama to children with disabilities. The support worker directed me to Curious Monkey’s Arriving group. There I met Amy Golding [Artistic Director of Curious Monkey and director of Penguin], and we got got on really well. I told her that I wanted to make my own show and tell people my story. Amy and I worked together on a short 10 minute performance piece, which I performed in 2019. We then developed another 10 minute piece in 2020. These two pieces were the beginning of Penguin. It developed from there.”
The message of Penguin is: Don’t give up. Life really is so difficult, but it’s really not worth giving up on it
Penguin touches on Hamzeh’s own experiences of living with disability, and he says his impetus to create the piece was “to tell the world that people with disabilities can achieve whatever they want they want to achieve”. “When I was in secondary school in Syria, lots of people would say to me, ‘you’re disabled, you’re nothing. Why are you even in school, what is the point?’ Lots of people called me ‘penguin’ as a negative thing, as an insult. Back then, I took it as a negative thing. Now, I take the word penguin as a positive: I am unique.”
Hamzeh is the primary performer in the play, and he describes it as an incredibly personal process, facilitated by his creative team looking for the best way to tell the story. Hamzeh’s brother, Waseem, has a small cameo in the play, and other members of the creative team are Arabic speakers, which aided in the realisation of Hamzeh’s creative ambitions.
Hamzeh describes a special relationship with his director Amy. “We talked and recorded our conversations over a long period of time. We would listen back and transcribe these stories, then edit them to make them shorter and more theatrical, together with our dramaturg Lindsay Rodden in a room. We did lots of R&D so that we could develop the script together in the room. I am the expert in my story, but Lindsay and Amy helped me to craft my words and stories into a play structure. Sometimes I would re-tell stories again as my English had improved so much from when we started the process.”
Hamzeh’s overarching intention is simple and beautiful: “I want the show to take audiences on a journey with me; for people to laugh and cry. I want to motivate people. The message of Penguin is: Don’t give up. Life really is so difficult, but it’s really not worth giving up on it.”
