An evening at the theatre – JUMP at the Boy at the Back of the Class

Earlier this month, the world’s first stage adaptation of the award-winning children’s novel The Boy at the Back of the Class premiered at the Rose Theatre in Kingston – and last week our JUMP community was there to watch it!

With JUMP staff having helped advise the cast at the beginning of their rehearsal period, it was great to come together with our project participants and see the performance on stage. And after the event, we were even lucky enough to meet and chat with Monique Touko, the director.

The play tells the story of Ahmed, an unaccompanied asylum-seeker, who travels from Syria to the UK.

Lots of the young people we support on JUMP have experiences just like Ahmed’s: many later shared that they really resonated with the story.

Back in January, our Project Leads Eliza and Rebecca joined the plays’ actors to share some of the issues facing unaccompanied asylum-seekers in the UK today, and what a young person’s journey to the UK can look like.

We’re really grateful to the Rose Theatre for enabling this opportunity and providing us with tickets! Watching the play together was so powerful, and after the event, one of our group shared:

“It was very special. I was deeply moved by it and by how… everyone in the JUMP group and the rest of the audience reacted to it.”