Anxious men, women and children are queueing in the corridors of what appears to be a French immigration office, clutching application forms. They wait in front of a window, then are sent to wait somewhere else. It is hot and stuffy. They look bewildered. "But I already went to that office," wails a teenage girl in combat trousers. "I've been waiting here for half an hour," she complains to a stern-looking woman in uniform. "I have been waiting for three years," snaps the immigration officer. These tired people are not real asylum seekers, but visitors to an unusual exhibition that publicises the plight of refugees (there are 20 million across the world, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees). And the testy immigration officer is an actress - Marcella Cisarova, a 23-year-old Slovak who fled to France in 1995 after racists burned down her house and beat her on the street.
"Playing this role is difficult for me. It brings back too many painful memories," says Cisarova. Still trembling from emotion or anger, she describes how her asylum claim was at first rejected despite massive evidence that gypsies are persecuted in eastern and central Europe. After three years and many appeals, living in a refugee centre and unable to work legally, she finally gained her refugee status. "People have no idea how hard it is."
In an effort to familiarise the public with the situation of asylum seekers in France (22,500 in 1998), a coalition of 10 human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and France Terre d'Asile, are staging An Unusual Journey, a giant role-play game, in partnership with the UNHCR. "Usually groups like Amnesty criticise the government," explains Amnesty International's Patrick Delonvin. "But this time we came up with a completely different way of showing the situation of refugees and explaining our concerns."
Pierre Henry, the director of France Terre d'Asile, adds: "We wanted to take the asylum debate away from the specialists, and to bring it to the people."
Inside the huge tent in Parc de la Villette, visitors read short biographies of 12 asylum seekers based on real-life stories, then step into the shoes of one of them. Children often pick Vesna, a 12-year-old girl from Bosnia, who lost her father in the war and got separated from her family. You can choose from other personas, including Ali, 49, from Somalia, fleeing civil war with his wife and seven children; Leila, a 36-year-old Algerian doctor threatened by Islamic fundamentalists; Luis, a Colombian homosexual; and Pavel, a Russian persecuted for being Jewish.
You embark on an uncertain journey from war or persecution to France, where you are met by indifferent or suspicious bureaucrats. You may be abused by soldiers, sent to prison, made to crawl and beg, exploited by smugglers, helped by aid workers and volunteers, or yelled at by the police. Your journey, in a small group of people who have chosen the same character, will take you through a realistic-looking refugee camp, a border post, a minefield or a sweatshop. It will invariably lead to a French immigration office and the various layers of administration dealing with asylum seekers: endless red tape and waiting. To add an edge to the 90-minute journey, actors - many of them refugees themselves - play soldiers, aid workers, police, and administration officials.
"The first time I went through the tour myself, I couldn't finish it. It was too painful," Cisarova says, her voice hoarse from rebutting pretend refugees. "I was wondering whether I should take this role. But I wanted to show people what it is to be a refugee. People think that we come to make money, but it's not true. I never thought that France was a paradise. I didn't have a choice."
Cisarova's mother escaped to Hungary, where the situation for gypsies was no better than at home. Cisarova wouldn't speak about her other family.
"Then when you come to France, it is not over: you wait and wait, without knowing how long it will take. You lose three years of your life because people don't believe you."
Some visitors giggle or look bored, but soon most are plunging into their roles. A few - especially young people, for whom the exhibition is principally designed - fight fiercely to get their papers. Some identify so much with their characters that they start talking in a pseudo-dialect they associate with that person's language. Cecile Delalande, the exhibition's co-ordinator, says: "Little by little, something happens between the actors and the visitors - often when people identify with their character's humiliation and helplessness." Then they will take the time to read the panels posted up throughout the exhibition.
At the end, visitors are shocked to find out that only four of the 12 characters gain official refugee status - which reflects what happened to their real-life counterparts. The others have either gone underground or been forced to leave the country.
`I feel very touched and indignant because my character, Olangi, waited for three years without an answer," says Toure Mamadu, a 30-year-old philosophy student. After a long pause, he adds: "It paralleled my own experience." A journalist in Mauritania, he wrote articles criticising his government, he explains. After two arrests, he fled. "Just like my character, officials asked for proof of persecution. But when you are a refugee you don't have official papers." Although an hour or two in the shoes of an asylum seeker doesn't begin to reflect the reality of being a refugee, reactions from visitors suggest the exhibition has an impact.
"We were in a world we didn't know about," says Gilbert Pincay, 44, from Nice. "When we emerged, we felt uneasy. It's definitely going to make me think about their condition."
"The actors made us realise that we were nothing," says Catherine Levieuge, a 19-year-old student who took the role of Pavel, the Russian Jew. "We felt like pawns. We were lost. We were like ping-pong balls, rejected by all the different administrations, and we didn't understand why."
"I didn't understand what the officials were saying, but they would just shout louder," says Christine Martin, 43, a British visitor. "Officialdom is as complex in the UK as in France. This exhibition would be really useful in England."
An Unusual Journey, says co-ordinator Delalande, is a very personal experience. "It doesn't really matter whether people get into their character or not - and it's obviously more difficult for an adult to do so. What's important is that it opens a dialogue."
Since it opened at Parc de la Villette in November, more than 20,000 people have embarked on the journey, and the exhibition has generated enquiries from as far as Spain, the US, Israel, Russia and Sweden.
"If tomorrow some of these people start to reflect about our relationship with one another; if they start questioning what is the validity of a democracy that cannot guarantee asylum to those who are persecuted, then we'll have met our challenge," says Henry of France Terre d'Asile.