Many people were thus born, grew up, got married and started families in these camps. Here, I helped develop curriculum activities again, training cultural orientation trainers to use theatre-based games and methods, as well as running a theatre project (four shows in three camps over five months). I wrote about this project at length and have published on it. See Publications: At the ‘frontiers’ of humanitarian performance.

After leaving this project, I chose to work with people who were staying behind. Many of the skilled technical staff departed via the resettlement programme, while more than half the community stayed behind in the camps. Working for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), I supported new staff to integrate theatre, and theatre-based activities to women’s protection programmes.

This was often part of community prevention activities, to stop violence against women. It also included responses, where the work was used to give psychosocial support to survivors of domestic and sexual violence and their children. The staff at the IRC and in the camps, many who were refugees themselves, were very thorough in their exploration and decision-making on how to use drama and theatre in this context. Often this was in making training on gender-based violence more participatory. They also made plays that travelled around inside the different refugee camps, sharing the realities women faced and giving information about services that were available to them and their families.

Later, I joined the IRC’s Legal Assistance Centre project, which offered legal advice and support to everyone in the camps. This was an opportunity to see how approaches to experiential learning could tie the objectives of one project to another. Together, we revised and developed workshops on Basic Thai Law, Civic Education, and Outreach sessions, exploring people’s every day relationships with the law, as refugees, living inside Thailand.