Calypso Productions' outreach programme explores what it is to be a refugee. It's an eye-opener for many of those taking part, writes Rosita Boland

There are five males leaning in over a table, all eyeballing the solitary female figure sitting nervously at the other side.

"I'm from Iraq and I'm applying for refugee status because all my family are dead and my country is at war," she says hesitantly.

They bark back: "What skills can you offer this country?"

"I could open a shop."

"Where would you get the money? Hurry up! We haven't got all day!"

It's a Tuesday morning, at Collinswood Park Community College in Rowlagh, Clondalkin, and transition-year students from classes 4A1 and 4A2 are role- playing being immigration officers. They're grilling fellow-classmates who are playing the roles of asylum seekers.

"Remember! Not everyone can be allowed in!" calls drama facilitator Peter Kelly. The "Iraqi" asylum seeker is turned down.

These transition-year students are taking part in workshops organised by theatre company Calypso Productions. It's part of an ongoing outreach programme, called Where is Home?, which explores through workshops what it is to be a refugee.

Calypso's productions in general are driven by social justice issues and human rights. Past productions have included Stolen Child, by Yvonne Quinn and Bairbre Ní Chaoimh, which looked at Irish Industrial Schools; The Asylum Ball, by Gavin Kostick, about people with mental health problems and their carers; and Cell, by Paula Meehan, which examined the lives of four women in a contemporary Irish prison.

The company is currently touring with a revival of their Dublin Fringe Festival hit, Sonja Linden's I Have Before Me A Remarkable Document Given To Me By A Young Lady From Rwanda. The workshops which the transition-year students are taking with Kelly and fellow facilitator Valerie Coyne are exploring themes around refugees and asylum seekers.

The school has very few non-national pupils and is thus, according to its guidance counsellor, Alison Daly, all the more anxious to promote discussion of these topics. Later in the week, they're going to see I Have Before Me . . . The idea is that participating in the workshops will have prepared them to better understand some of themes being explored in the play.

THERE IS a bit of giggling during the role-play. "I'm from China," says one white girl, with a broad Dublin accent - and her immigration officers temporarily lose their concentration - but not that much. There are some 30 students in each workshop. After they're finished, Kelly asks if any of the "immigration officers" enjoyed the roles. Eleven people raise their hands.

"I liked being the boss, being in charge," one boy says. The other 10 nod. None of them look even vaguely embarrassed.

"We can't let everyone in," one girl states. "We have enough problems of our own."

Of those "emigration officers who did not enjoy the experience, one boy says: "I felt bad for them, because we couldn't let everyone in."

Apart from role-playing immigration officers and asylum seekers, the classes try what's called the "steps" exercise. All the students are given a card with an specific identity, such as "You are a 17-year-old refugee from Kosovo living in a hostel without your family"; "You are the daughter of a local bank manager. You study economics at university"; or "You are an unemployed schoolteacher in a country whose new official language you are not fluent in."

When they've been given their identities, they stand at the back of the room. As the facilitator calls out various statements - "You are not afraid of being harassed or attacked on the streets or in the media"; "You have decent housing with a telephone and television,"; and "You feel your language, religion and culture are respected in the society where you live" - they are asked to take a step forward if they feel this if true for their character. By the end of session, half the students are at the opposite end of the room from where they started and some haven't taken even one step forward.

"It was the steps thing that made the most impression on me," says Tanya Govan later. "Looking around and seeing people still at the back of the room. I didn't realise life could be so bad for some people."

"For me, it was the immigration officers thing that really surprised me," Jonathan Brady says. "They really didn't care about the people they were seeing. If that's the way the real immigration officers are, it must be very intimidating."

"I never understood before today what the difference between an asylum seeker and a refugee was," says Ciara Fitzgerald.

Bairbre Ní Chaoimh is Calypso's artistic director. "We wanted to stage a play that would reflect the day-to-day experiences of the new communities living in Ireland. Those plays don't exist yet, but they will. So we used Sonja Linden's Rwanda play instead. The outreach programme we're doing alongside it extends the life of a play."

As a recently appointed associate director at the Abbey, Ní Chaoimh sees "a big part of my role at the Abbey as helping people from new communities access art and participate in it. As a national theatre, we have to change to reflect the presence of our new communities".

TWO DAYS LATER, the students are at Liberty Hall to see Calypso's two-hander show, with Madeline Appiah and Michael James Ford, set in London. Appiah plays Juilette, a young Tutsi woman from Rwanda who has lost virtually all of her family in the war. Ford plays Simon, an English poet of very modest success, who has taken a part-time job at a refugee centre to help mentor refugees trying to work through their horrific experiences by writing about it. A short film with clips of media coverage from the time precedes the performance.

At one point in the play, Simon gives Juilette a lift in his car, thinking that it will be "a luxury" for her. She is distinctly unimpressed, comparing it with her father's expensive car he had in Rwanda. "It doesn't even have a CD player!" she marvels.

As the play unfolds, Juilette's story of her past emerges: betrayed by Hutu neighbours they played with as children, most of her family is butchered before her, but she escapes when left for dead. In London, she learns that one brother, Claud, whom she last saw when he was 10, has survived and is in Uganda. He is her only surviving family. And he is refused permission to join her in London.

"Why?" Simon asks her, but the question is unnecessary. Juilette has no job, virtually no money, and lives alone in a single poorly furnished room.

Afterwards, the students mull over the play. "Brilliant" is the consensus.

"Doing the workshops gave me more of a sense of how people felt in those situations," Ciaran Hogan says.

"When Claud got refused, what came straight to my mind was the immigration officers role-playing we'd done," says Jonathan Brady.

"You can read about things in books but you don't have the same emotions when you read something as when you see something," says Ciara Fitzgerald.

They were astonished that Juilette thought so little of Simon's car; that in Rwanda, her father had had a better car, and high standard of living.

"You think they're all poor," Leanne Moroney states, and Garret Brogan agrees.

"There he was thinking he was giving her a treat in his car, and she was thinking 'the state of it!'," laughs Tanya Govan.

What made most impact on them? They consider. "When she was explaining at the end how her family was murdered. How it was the neighbours that told on them, and they had trusted the neighbours," says Fitzgerald.

So what about trust, if you've lived in a country where the neighbours whose children you've played with, betray you to murderers? "You can't trust anyone," Fitzgerald says.

"If worse comes to worst, you'll always have someone going behind your back," Leanne Moroney flatly, and there is a grim little silence of agreement.

I Have Before Me A Remarkable Document Given To Me By a Young Lady from Rwanda is at: Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise, Co Laois, today and tomorrow; Backstage Theatre and Centre for the Arts, Farneyhoogan, Co Longford, Feb 9-10; The Helix, Dublin 9, Feb 14-18, with a matinee on Feb 17; Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Co Mayo, Feb 20-21; and Glór Irish Music Centre, Ennis, Co Clare, Feb 24-25