Fugee

For unit 8 we are doing a play called 'Fugee' by Abi Morgan. Fugee is slang for refugee of political oppression or natural disaster. In which the play is about,  child refugees where the main protagonist Kojo is a refugee of political oppression . The play takes place in modern United Kingdom and follows the story of the fourteen year old boy (but no one believes him), Kojo from the Ivory Coast in Africa. 
Kojo is just one of the unaccompanied  fugee minors arriving in London, abandoned on the streets of the UK. 
the other characters include :

• Ara's a fourteen year old girl from Baghdad and still hears the bombs at night. She is the first person Kojo meets and is his closest friend.

• Cheung is a fourteen year old boy who can do back flips and is from village in China that is more than a thousand years old. He's Kojo's friend and room mate 

• Hassan - Another child at the children's refuge, he's from Iraq. 

• Roza - Another child at the children's refuge who befriends Kojo, she's also from Iraq. 

As all the characters are  orphans stranded  in London, they are the only family they have now. Together they tell Kojo's story: a story of lost childhood, tall trees and a murder in motion; a murder  done by a fourteen year old boy that everyone says is a man.

Fugee is not in chronological order, as the beginning of the play is a glimpse into the ending which is the last scene of the story. I really like how Abi Morgan structured the play this way because you get to watch the story completely unfold after being shocked at the  beginning  drawing the audience in with curiosity asking themselves ;

"What made a fourteen year old boy stab a innocent mad for no reason?"

I think it's extremely effective as it straight away tells us the end of the play. So  throughout the rest of the play, all of the reasons and factors to why Kojo reacted the way he did at the begging start to unfold. This different to the traditional plays where the factors and  reasons build up to reach the plays climax at the end.


When Kojo was 11 years old his family was killed and Kojo was enslaved as a child soldier. This is when his journey eventually takes him to arrive in the UK where he meets other child refugees while in the UK. However his struggles with the home office who don't believe his age and traumatic  past comes to haunt him.  His traumatic past being revolved around child soldiers really defines Kojo as a character and how the trauma  affects  him on a daily basis. This suggest how child soldiers is a problem which needs to stop as so many lives have bee. affected in the play as well as reality.