Theatre company set up on Scottish refugee ship to perform at Fringe
The show will be performed for one night at the EICC in Edinburgh
Ukrainian refugee children who formed a theatre company while living on a cruise ship after arriving in Scotland are to tell their story in a performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
A one-off show of Mission of Innocence's Life In One Suitcase is to be performed on Friday at the EICC, where the play, written by Oksana Saiapina, will chart refugees' journeys from Ukraine to Scotland.
The arts charity was created by Joyce Landry in 2022, after 400 children and more than 600 adults moved into temporary accommodation on a cruise ship docked in Leith after fleeing the war.
“We had them on board and very quickly, we started to see that the 400 children were playing on the stage in the ship,” said Ms Landry, chief executive of Landry and Kling, which provides cruise ships for purposes including meetings and pop-up accommodation for major events, as well as disaster relief.
“We thought if they really want to perform, we will let them do that.”
She added: “Some of them knew how to dance and had had musical training back in Ukraine. Arts education in Ukraine is very strong.”
An initial performance for a Christmas party turned into a more permanent project.
“We started this because we saw the children were looking for a community of their own, outside what their parents were doing,” said Ms Landry. “We only realised with hindsight how healing this was. The mental health impact was so important. The children have developed this sense of confidence.
Ms Landry has now moved the headquarters of her company from Miami to Edinburgh, where she also runs Mission of Innocence.
Life In One Suitcase includes music and dance performances from around 50 children and adults from the Ukrainian community. Some children involved in the project are also performing nightly in a Ukrainian choir at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.
Refugee Ms Saiapina, a dance teacher and choreographer in Ukraine, was brought in to coordinate the project.
She said: “This performance is about the lives of all Ukrainians who came to Scotland. Not only me, but all the people I met here. They all came from Ukraine due to the war. When the war started, I had to shut down my dance school and leave the place where I lived.
“Our programme started on board the cruise ship where a lot of Ukrainians came. We started doing this creative work here.”
Two cruise ships, MS Victoria in Edinburgh and MS Ambition in Glasgow, were used alongside thousands of hotel rooms as “welcome accommodation” for new arrivals from Ukraine, before being decommissioned in 2023 as the flow of Ukrainians entering Scotland slowed.
The ships were used while appropriate housing was sourced, when the Scottish Government paused its super-sponsor scheme in July 2022 due to significant demand. More than 20,000 Ukrainians travelled to Scotland through the scheme, which allowed refugees to list the Scottish Government as their main sponsor when entering the country through the UK Government’s Homes for Ukraine visa scheme.
Life In One Suitcase will be performed on Friday, 15 August at 3.30pm.
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