On a stage in Newcastle, a man stands before an audience and says, “This is who I am.” Behind him, the words are projected in English to his left and Arabic to his right. Below them hang rows of jackets on hangers – costumes of identity, waiting to be worn or discarded. Hamzeh Al Hussien is performing Penguin, a seventy-minute solo show that traces his journey from a village in the Syrian mountains to the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, and finally to Gateshead, in the north-east of England. It is a story of displacement, disability, and the fierce, funny, unrelenting work of becoming oneself.
The show’s title is itself an act of reclamation. “Penguin” was what children shouted at Hussien because of his gait, caused by the particular arrangement of his lower limbs. It was meant as an insult. He has turned it into a badge of honour – a symbol not of limitation but of survival, defiance, and the refusal to be defined by someone else’s projection.
From Syria to the Stage
Hamzeh Al Hussien’s story begins in the Syrian mountains, where he grew up stealing fruit from neighbours’ trees and dreaming of becoming a dancer. The civil war shattered that childhood. He spent six years in Za’atari, one of the largest refugee camps in the world, where he was introduced to physical theatre by a Spanish NGO. It was there, amid the dust and deprivation of camp life, that he discovered the transformative power of performance.
“In the camp, we had nothing,” Hussien has said. “But when we performed, we had everything.” Theatre gave him a language for experiences that exceeded ordinary speech – the terror of airstrikes, the boredom of displacement, the constant negotiation of identity in a place designed to erase it. He facilitated drama projects with disabled children in the camp, using performance not merely as expression but as therapy, community-building, and resistance.
In 2018, Hussien joined the Arriving project, Curious Monkey’s ongoing creative programme for people seeking sanctuary. It was through this programme that he met director Amy Golding, with whom he would co-create Penguin. Their collaboration was built on mutual respect and a shared conviction that refugee stories must be told by refugees – not interpreted, filtered, or sanitised by others.
The Architecture of Memory
Penguin is not a linear narrative. It skips through time and place, moving between Hussien’s present life in Gateshead – learning to cook, dancing in nightclubs, losing control of his mobility scooter – and his past in Syria and Jordan. The structure mirrors the experience of displacement itself: disorienting, non-linear, haunted by simultaneity.
The set is deliberately simple. Panels of irregularly shaped canvas serve as screens for projected text, bilingual and bisected. Hats, scarves, and clothing hang beneath them – props that Hussien picks up and discards throughout the performance, each one carrying a different identity, a different version of himself. The audience is not passive. At various points, they are invited to hold up lemons for their scent, to sing along to karaoke, to participate in childhood games. The effect is intimate and immersive: the boundary between performer and witness dissolves.
Hussien’s delivery is direct, unadorned, and laced with humour. He talks about the absurdities of refugee bureaucracy, the challenges of learning Geordie, the awkwardness of dating with a disability. He talks about the way people in the UK look at him – sometimes with curiosity, sometimes with barely concealed discomfort – and the way they film him secretly on their phones. He talks about the heartache of being called Penguin as a child, and the moment he decided to take the word back.
“This was a tremendous performance,” wrote one reviewer, “who challenged the audience in their preconceptions about refugees, ableism and what essentially makes up a human being.”
Disability and Displacement: A Dual Marginalisation
One of Penguin‘s most powerful threads is its exploration of the intersection between disability and displacement. Hussien has spoken about the parallels between the two experiences: both involve navigating a world that was not designed for you, both require constant adaptation, and both are accompanied by a societal expectation to be “superhuman” or “exceptional” in order to justify your existence.
“With Penguin I wanted to showcase what disabled people can do and highlight the different experiences of disability I faced in my village growing up in Syria, in a refugee camp in Jordan, and the UK,” Hussien explained in a 2025 learning event. “I endured bullying and people staring from childhood, and even when I arrived in the UK.”
This dual marginalisation – disabled and displaced – creates a compounding invisibility. Refugee narratives tend to focus on the journey: the escape, the camp, the resettlement. Disability narratives tend to focus on inspiration or tragedy. Hussien refuses both frameworks. His show is funny, messy, and stubbornly specific. It does not ask for pity. It demands recognition.
The problematic societal expectation for disabled and displaced individuals to be “superhuman” to matter is something Hussien challenges directly. “We really need to assert that everyone matters regardless of their abilities or circumstances,” he has said. It is a simple assertion, but in the context of a culture that rewards exceptionalism and punishes ordinariness, it is also a radical one.
The Return to Za’atari
In a moment that transcended performance, Penguin toured back to Za’atari camp – the place Hussien once called home. He performed the show for friends and family and saw his mother for the first time since leaving. In the show, he recalls forgetting to kiss her hand when he departed – a detail that carries the weight of guilt, longing, and the impossibility of return. On his visit back, he finally got to.
The return was not merely personal. It was an act of testimony – bringing the story full circle, showing the community that had shaped him what it had produced. The audience in the camp saw themselves reflected in the performance: their landscape, their language, their particular blend of suffering and resilience. For Hussien, it was the most meaningful performance of his career.
Theatre as Witness
Penguin exists within a growing body of work by refugee and displaced artists who use theatre to confront the political and personal dimensions of their experience. Unlike documentary or journalism, theatre offers something独特的: the presence of a human body on a stage, speaking directly to other human bodies in an audience. It creates empathy not through information but through encounter.
Hussien’s show does not argue for policy change or present statistics. It does something more fundamental: it makes visible a person who might otherwise be reduced to a category – “refugee,” “disabled,” “immigrant” – and insists on his complexity. He is all of these things and none of them. He is a man who loves shisha, dances badly on purpose, and speaks two languages with equal fluency. He is, in other words, irreducible.
The show’s power lies in its refusal to simplify. Displacement is not a single event but a continuous process. Identity is not a fixed point but a negotiation. And theatre, at its best, is not a representation of life but an enactment of it – a space where the audience and the performer meet in the present tense, sharing air and attention and the fragile, temporary community of a story being told.
A Standing Ovation, and What Follows
Penguin ended its Newcastle run with a full standing ovation. During a period of deep division over immigration, asylum, and national identity, the show served as an essential reminder that the people behind the headlines are not abstractions. They are individuals with histories, humour, and the same desire for dignity that motivates everyone.
Hamzeh Al Hussien has found who he really is. The question his show poses – gently, persistently, without easy answers – is whether the rest of us are willing to do the same.
For more on theatre and displacement, explore our analysis of refugee voices in contemporary performance and the role of art in building community.
