The play ‘ Migratory Birds’ especially written for the Cypriot Diaspora Project by Christos Prossylis, was performed by the GPA Youth theatre group to a full house at the Intimate theatre on Sunday 11th June 2006. The young actors were enthusiastically applauded for their ‘professional’ performance and have received excellent reviews in the local press.

The GPA Youth theatre would welcome invitations from community associations to perform this play for them.

The play ‘Migratory Birds’ is written for the Cypriot Diaspora Project. It is an ambitious project by the Greek Parents Association, which records testimonies of early Greek-Cypriot immigrants to England, who came mainly in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. It was inspired by the touching stories of immigrants in their new homeland. It is an original play and it is presented for the first time in this production today. The names of the heroes are the names of the children who participate.

A group of children of Greek-Cypriot origin who live in England wishes to describe to little John, the youngest child of the group, how his Grandfather and Grandmother who are now dead, met for the first time. It is a summer’s night in London. Little John, accompanied by Maria greets his Grandfather and Grandmother who are now among the stars. He is fascinated by the children’s idea to present in a play Grandfather’s and Grandmother’s first meeting, all those years ago. The children explore through this theatrical game, the way their ancestors used to behave, how they used to think, what type of problems they were usually faced with and what dreams they had. This way, they get in touch with previous generations and try to understand better that era. They get to respect their history, and their Greek-Cypriot heritage.

Christina and Thaleia are two sisters who live and work with their family in London, in the 1930s. They welcome their nephew Leonidas (the grandfather) from Cyprus, who has been sent a work visa but dreams of studying. There he meets Evie (the grandmother), a friend of the girls, who is working in London as a hairdresser. The rest of the story… on stage. The children act and live in this era as if it is real; they engage passionately with this theatrical game, with this ‘theatre within theatre’ for little John’s sake. They are thrilled by the wonderful traditional music which accompanies the play and which is sang with emotion, a capella, like the song of loneliness and struggle from the lips of an immigrant during long hours of labour.

I would like to thank the Cypriot Diaspora Project Committee for their support in the creation and presentation of this play. Special thanks to Panayiotis Yiacoumi and Maria Kasamia for organising the project and to Dimitris Efstathiou for his help in transferring parts of the text in the traditional Cypriot dialect.

Christos Prossylis