A celebration of survival, new beginnings and how events taking place in other parts of the world directly affect people here in the UK.
CAN developed 2010’s Exodus Onstage Refugee Theatre Festival as part of our ground-breaking and acclaimed programme of refugee arts. The festival was a month of contemporary performance spanning theatre, dance, children’s performances, hip-hop theatre, monologue, spoken-word, and immersive theatre.
The festival collaborated with a wide range of refugee-led creative groups and organisations from around Greater Manchester. The groups and individuals taking part in Exodus Onstage shared their personal stories and explored the wider narratives of war, loss, displacement, asylum, the erasure of their community’s culture and history in the countries they left behind, diaspora, settlement and survival.
“There may be a time when you are alone, and you have lost everything. Fleeing from home with nothing but the clothes on your back. The government in my country says it’s a democracy but it’s a dictatorship.”
Rehearsals and performances took place in many of Greater Manchester’s venues including the Royal Exchange Studio, Sale’s Waterside Arts Centre, Contact, The Lowry and Z-arts. The programme also developed one-off collaborative performances with groups such as the acclaimed spoken word night, Speakeasy.