After walking more than 8000 kilometres across Europe, a puppet named Little Amal took the stage at COP26 in Glasgow to raise awareness of the plight of refugee children and the effects of climate change.
Little Amal gained plenty of attention on her journey. Travelling a route similar to that made by refugees for many years, the 3.5-metre tall puppet was pelted with stones by far-right protesters in Greece and received a papal welcome in Rome.
Amir Nizar Zuabi is the artistic director for The Walk, which was produced by Good Chance Theatre Company. The child himself of Jewish and Palestinian refugees, Zuabi was inspired to dedicate his theatre career to the refugee experience.
Zuabi has just returned home from Glasgow and tells Kim Hill he’s exhausted but very happy to have completed the odyssey started in mid-July.
“We’ve been walking ever since, from the border of Syria all the way to Glasgow.”
The original destination was Manchester but Glasgow was added on once they understood COP26 was happening a couple of days after they would have finished in Manchester.
“We felt that after our little girl has walked through a very big chunk of this world, she will have something to say or share in regards to climate change. As we were walking through Turkey, fires were raging. As we were walking through Greece, fires were raging. The Syrian war partly started because of droughts.
“Climate change is something you can no longer ignore, even if you wish to do so. We felt that, as a young girl, as a representative of the people that will pay the highest price for the negligence of today’s leaders, she has something to say on the subject and that’s why we felt that going to COP26 would be an important step in our voyage.”
Zuabi says they were inspired by the play The Jungle which follows the lives of people living in the Calais Jungle migrant camp and decided to make a show that explores the journey to places like that camp.
“I was interested to create the journey, the 8000-kilometre journey. We tried to create a theatre play where the stage is Turkey and Europe. It’s ambitious, unheard of even, but it was an unbelievable journey and we were very humbled and grateful that it accumulated into something meaningful for hundreds of thousands of people that met us along the way.”
However, not everyone sympathises with the plight of refugees and Amal became something of a lighting rod in some areas they walked through, for instance Greece.
“She is the lightning rod for our hopes, our wishes, for our empathy, our compassion. For others, she’s also the lightning rod for hated and xenophobia. The reception in one city, in particular, in Greece was very violent and I think it was from the extreme right because we were surrounded by children and were pelted with stones and objects.
“Not everybody welcomes strangers, we know that. When strangers come into society there are two ways to go about it, one is to barricade yourself and be afraid, the other is to welcome them and develop with them.”
The project was close to home for Zuabi who comes from a Jewish mother and Palestinian father and whose family has gone through the refugee experience.
“My Jewish grandparents came from Europe and, by coming from Europe as refugees, they exiled the other part of my family. This runs very deep in my cultural DNA. I’m invested because I think the refugee issue is something that will stay with us for many years. It will intensify because of climate change.”
