Aid workers in the spotlight

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

Enter stage left: humanitarian aid workers.

They will be in the spotlight on 11 and 12 July, when the curtain goes up on Think global, fuck local at London’s Royal Court Theatre.

"I find their world hugely fascinating," Feehily told OneWorld UK.

One of the journalists she interviewed while gathering material for the 35-minute presentation – which will later be worked up into a full-length play – told her scathingly: "Kabul is the new adventure playground. It’s full of Sloaney girls and ineffectual, floppy-haired young men."

The aid workers she interviewed came from a number of organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, MSF and Concern.

"We were blown away by the people we met [the other part of the "we" is her partner, director Max Stafford Clark]. They are the real celebrities", she says, taking a poke at the celebrity culture that dominates so much of the media. "There are a lot of interesting people out there doing incredible work who go unacknowledged.

"I find the whole sector pretty cool. And at the end of the day, it's a force for good: so what, if they kick up their heels and have a bit of fun?"

Feehily was particularly interested by the "many fascinating women" in the aid world, and was intrigued "by the ambivalence of people’s attitudes to their work. I found many people were conflicted, especially with workers involved in research. Though it was accepted that the reports were important, the fear was in re-traumatising people. There was guilt, too. Seeing people die every day: how does anybody deal with that kind of stress?"

Will showing their private lives undermine support for humanitarian aid?

"Not at all. People come to the theatre to see other lives, other worlds. People who work in the humanitarian sector are on the front line: we might see them for 45 seconds on TV but I think we should wonder about them and remember these are real people working in often very difficult and sometimes dangerous circumstances."

The real-life stories she picked up include a wealthy banker who read about Balkan war horrors on his way to work and was greeted by a colleague who thrust the same newspaper report in front of him and asked urgently, "Have you seen this, mate? What’s it going to do to the dollar?" Horrified by his colleague's reaction, the banker resigned immediately and within days had secured an assignment in Kosovo.

Individuals will not be identifiable in the quotes and characters gathered by Feehily. "Some characters are a conflation", she says, "and I call the script 'verbiction'" [itself a conflation of verbatim theatre and fiction].

Were there any surprises during her research? "People who have read the script were shocked by the stories of gold smuggling by UN peacekeepers from Pakistan. You don’t expect these people to be part of the problem."