There is a general consensus amongst those of us who went to Calais that it will be some time before we are all able to process that experience. That certainly rings true for me.

But having been asked to try to put some thoughts down in a coherent form, I will try to do just that here.

An early train from London meant our arrival in Calais at 09.00am. And that in itself is hard to fathom – this place really is on our doorstep. That simile doesn’t smack the emotional punch it sort of needs to: let’s try, Stratford-upon-Avon is further from the Globe than Calais is.

Getting off the train was bleak. Really really cold – and we were at least adequately dressed for it. The drive to the Jungle takes you on one passing swoop of the site before exiting off towards the port and back on yourself along the sliproad which leads to the site’s main entrance. It serves both as a final warning  - almost, ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ – and a clear explanation of quite why the site has grown up where it has. The port is right there. The lorries thundering past on the motorway are right there.

You slow to a crawl on entering the site – the ground is pitted and rock-strewn, and the tracks are only one vehicle wide. Our one route to the Good Chance tent site was temporarily blocked by a truck provided by the French government to service the portaloos, so we half-heartedly drove a little further on before doubling back and deciding to walk the final few metres with the gear we had bought for the show. It meant we saw the site where the chapel has stood before being pulled down only a few days earlier. We saw a couple of make-shift cafes, and volunteer-run book stalls, but mainly it presented us with rows of cobbled together shacks - creative combinations of tarpaulin and sticks of wood, lashed together with lengths of salvaged polyester rope - interspersed with the sort of tents you see abandoned in the fields of Glastonbury the morning after the night before. In short, nothing you’d want to brave any sort of February in.

I counted myself lucky that I had a purpose that day. We arrived to find a stage half-built, and a lot of cold but determined folk working to create a level surface, and spaces in the tent for the company to change and warm up. They would be arriving in 2 hours, and we needed to have got at least part of the set up for them, and to have made the Good Chance Calais’ dome tent habitable for the remainder of the day. Thank goodness for something to focus on that meant my brain was at least partly occupied.

In some strange respects the morning passed as it would on any other site. Answering questions about how best to position things, how much space is needed in front of this piece of set, is this enough space for 4 actors to get changed? We all looked up at the sky and debated the chance of rain (absolutely standard behaviour for a) Brits and b) Brits who do outdoor touring). As the stage took shape, more and more people gathered, curious as to what we were up to. The actors arrived and chatted to those who were having a look, then took themselves into the tent to get ready. The synopsis of the show got handed out (in English, French, Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Kurdish), a violin-playing volunteer stood centre stage and struck up her instrument, popcorn in paper bags was handed out by the community kitchen, and slowly people sat themselves on the coir matting and took up their positions all around the performance area.

And then the show started, and people watched, chatted, cheered, laughed, and concentrated. But we were in the infamous ‘Jungle’ and our audience were people at a catastrophically low point in their lives, with no official recognition from the country they were situated in and certainly no obvious affection from the country they are all so desperate to get to. I don’t really feel able to comment honestly here on the response to the show as I spent my time backstage keeping an eye on how everything was progressing. But I’m very clear that there was a response, a whole range of responses in fact, and that is what I think is important about that day. That we turned up and did something, in the hope that those people might be interested. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less. 

As soon as the show finished we began dismantling what had only just been built. As I hauled myself up into the back of a van, carrying one of end of a section of metal structure, I nearly dropped the thing in fright when I realised there was a person, wrapped up in tarpaulins and hidden from direct sight, on the the floor of the van previously where I’d been about to drop my end of the metalwork. He announced his presence at the last minute by wriggling out of his tarpaulin and asking “London?”, with an air of optimism. “Sorry, no, this van’s staying in France”. (which was true) “France?” “Yes, France. Calais, in fact.” This was greeted by a chorus of laughter from the men surrounding the truck and curious as to what was happening. Derisive, but still cheerful hoots of “Ha! Calais” greeted our wannabe stowaway as he clambered out of his self-made cocoon. I got the distinct impression that he hadn’t had any serious hopes that our van would get him to the UK, in fact I genuinely think he’d spotted the chance to hunker down somewhere, if not warm, then at least out of the wind for half a hour. I don’t blame him.  

Once he’d dusted himself off, and finally been convinced that this particular van was of no use to him, he cheerfully dismissed from the back of it, and spent the next ten minutes helping us load up. 

I’ve never been so relieved to be out of place as I was when we drove out later that afternoon, and never has the phrase ‘an accident of birth’ been quite so meaningful.

- by Tamsin Mehta, Associate Producer