How Not To Drown @ Chichester Festival Theatre
I really believe that theatre should move, get you to encounter people you’d never normally come across and have you leaving through the door thinking and feeling differently. Nicola McCartney, Dritan Katrasti and Neil Bettles do just that.
This is Dritan Katrasti’s story and he stars in it too. But it’s also an ensemble piece as the five person cast of ThickSkin bring a painful journey to life. Dritan is 11 years old, super confident and cheeky, and being trained in the ways of Kosovan culture and manhood by his dad. All is not well as this is the 1990s — Communism is ending, Yugoslavia fragmenting and nations are breaking out for independence and jostling for power — Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Dritan’s parents feel that they are ethnically Albanian and along with their wise words of ‘you’re nothing without family’, guns, money and connections seem important too. Fearing for reprisals, in an uneasy post-Kosovan war peace, Dritan’s older brother and then Dritan himself are sent away. We never quite know why Dritan’s dad is so afraid, nor why he has such good esteem amongst the people smuggling Mafia. Is it just besa? (The honourable idea of helping someone if you can).
At 11 year old, Dritan heads off on an epic journey to Ilford to join his brother, via lots of pit stops across Europe and a heck of a lot of money. The risk is immense — they are squashed into boats; cling on literally foe dear life and gag at the smell of petrol, looking out for number one alone; they have to navigate trains and buy tickets without the necessary language skills. There’s a hilarious bit where Dritan gets fed up with being ripped off, reports the person doing the ripping off and gets improved customer service — this time the Mafia representative swishes and schmoozes, and then informs (in advance) that they will, apologetically, be ripping them off soon…
Somehow he survives. Only to end up waiting for the next meeting at a strip club. There he meets an school friend too. Having already picked up an adult (who he doesn’t know at all) along the way, they take his friend along too. I couldn’t help but think of the 200 missing (presumed kidnapped and trafficked) asylum seeking children and young people in the UK, and what they must have already gone through. Of the families, the women and children without their menfolk and wider connections, squashed together in unsuitable hotels and run down accommodation or dependent on the kindness and goodwill of strangers and all horribly vulnerable. I couldn’t help but think what would have happened to them if they were female at this point? The strip club workers aren’t unkind, but again I wonder how many of them were trafficked and who is there by choice?
There are a lot of heart in mouth moment — the adult along for the ride ‘Jimmy’, who can speak English and knows the UK, takes their money to buy tickets — and does return. Hungry and overwhelmed in London, a Albanian offers them help, money for snacks and guidance. Somehow shouting ‘Ilford’ and gestures get them the tickets they need to the destination and a happy reunion with his brother.
Only this isn’t a happy reunion for long. On registering, the official system kicks in and Dritan is forcibly separated from his brother and put in emergency foster care. Dritan has zero English and his very kind foster family no Albanian. He’s moved on to the sea side (away from the friend he’s been travelling with all this time and his brother) to a family who are mesmerised by the TV, not unkind, but not really a family either and also fostering an emotionally disturbed boy who literally excretes in Dritan’s bed. Due to a lack of language, Dritan can’t communicate and so gets the blame. Nor can he meet with his brother — a visit is blocked by his foster family. While his carers are on holiday (without him), he’s placed with yet another family — but these are like a real family, they do care and they do include and listen. They want to have him long term, but his current family say no and are backed up by the social worker — no one seems to be caring or indeed listening to Dritan.
A change of social worker does Dritan the world of good — she actually listens and does things properly, giving him space and privacy. She sees and hears how unhappy Dritan is and he’s moved to yet another family — all the while getting further and further away from his brother. This family is better, but still not a true family — he starts school, but due to language and communication barriers, get horribly bullied — learns to fight back, makes a friend and learns to fight back some more. A drama teacher sees him, and starts to speak to him — telling him to stop fighting himself (and most of all other Albanians). There’s a culture of gangs (as social groups), and as people get older within Kosovan culture this develops into fighting — brothers, sisters, friends, other gangs.
Dritan survives it all — his foster family offer him money to stay with them. Which is strange given that his foster dad had stood up for him at a school meeting and mentioned the ongoing racist taunts. He doesn’t want money, but to be seen and heard, to be loved even. I wonder if this is another cultural misunderstanding — whether they were trying not to buy him but treat him like a son and help him further his ambitions. At the same time his foster dad never seems to know what to do with his expressed emotions — he just wants family not those doing a job. At 16 he leaves and goes to stay with an Albanian friend — he can now see his brother again. He also chooses to return to Albania (where his family are now living) and see his Mum, Dad and sister again. There’s an excruciating moment where he reveals that he can’t say the word Mum in English — he never had anyone to use the word on and so Mum is always in Albanian for him. He meets a nephew, his sister’s son, who he’s never met before and sees the dislocation — of not belonging anywhere and yet having two cultures to navigate, and also the deep feelings of belonging again as he returns to Kosovo and sees all the familiar things. As well as the ruins of where he used to live.
Dritan was in tears at the end. So was I. Unlike The Boy With Two Hearts, this play is less about hopeful optimism and gratitude, and more about the anger of being failed, again and again — of not being heard, listened to, seen. The system is unrelenting — questioning an 11 year old boy who’s trying not to cry. Deciding that his brother is not old enough at 17 to care for him (but also not trying to support this care). The unevenness of the foster care system (the lack of PTSD and trauma informed care and even language/culture matching) — often Dritan doesn’t understand why he’s being asked what he’s being asked (with an awful lot of adults in the room, including a translator) and given his age, has little decision making in what happens to him. The grimness of today’s system must be even worse as you are left hanging around unable to get on with your life, to start working and do normal things — or suddenly shipped off to Rwanda, or lost from your hotel, unnoticed until there are 200 of you gone. Krish Kandiah and City of Sanctuary are trying to change things and with the system discussions portrayed as ‘blah blah blah’, merely telling Dritan what they’d decided. It needs changing — it was miserable to see a child trying not to cry as they were bombarded with questions (questions which perhaps needed to be asked). But he was still a child who’d been through a lot of trauma — accepted trauma perhaps and embraced with gusto, but still a lot. No one seemed to get his need to be listened to, seen heard, actually included in a family. There was a deep worry every time he moved — would they beat him? Would they rape him? The families didn’t, but most of them weren’t real families either. To be blocked from being put with a kind and loving family and from seeing his brother seems madness — and who decides what’s in the best interests of the child?
But Dritan’s wail will remain ringing in my ears ‘nobody wants to come here’. I thought too of the schoolgirl raped by asylum seeking youths recently. It’s horrific — school should be safe. Whilst I don’t want to play down the horrors that the victim has gone through, I couldn’t help but wonder what society has done to 14, 15 and 13 year olds to think that they should even do this. For Dritan too, school was not safe, and it should be.
There is humour though — he soared in Maths, revealing that he was average back at school in Kosovo — here he’s a genius. Although he rebelliously refused to learn English, even when pushed by his dad. Eventually he learns the fight words (and so here we go again). I’m glad to say though (the play doesn’t hint at it), that the drama teacher won and Dritan is now an actor. Also his family are beautifully portrayed — such as his sister the fighter and his Mum, the pharmacist.
Warning though — be prepared to come out angry, weeping and ready to change things!
To read more about the man behind the play:
The Scotsman Sessions #139: Dritan Kastrati | The Scotsman
Please also consider supporting:
Refugee Action Home — Refugee Action (refugee-action.org.uk)
Krish Kandiah— improving fostering and adoption, and developing the Sanctuary Project krish bio site (krishk.com)
