"But I already went to that office," wails a teenage girl in combat trousers. "I've been waiting here for half-an-hour," she complains to a stern-looking woman in uniform.

"I have been waiting for three years," snaps the uniformed woman.

These tired people are not real asylum seekers, but visitors in an unusual interactive exhibit on the plight of refugees -- now more than 20 million across the world, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). And the testy immigration officer is an actress -- Marcella Cisarova, 23, a gypsy who fled to France from Slovakia in 1995 after racists burned down her house and beat her on the street.

"Playing this role is difficult -- it brings back many painful memories," she says. Her asylum claim was first rejected despite massive evidence that gypsies are persecuted in Eastern and Central Europe. It took three years of living in a refugee center, unable to work legally and many appeals before she finally gained her refugee status.

In an effort to familiarize the public with the situation of asylum seekers, a coalition of ten human rights organizations are staging "An Unusual Journey," a giant role-play game.

Inside the huge 1,800 square yard tent, visitors read short biographies of 12 asylum seekers based on real-life stories, then step into the shoes of one. Children often pick Vesna, a 12-year-old girl from Bosnia who lost her father in the war and was separated from her family. Other choices include Ali, 49, a former slave from Somalia, fleeing civil war with his wife and seven children; Leila, a 36-year-old Algerian doctor threatened by fundamentalists; Luis, a Colombian homosexual, or Pavel, a Russian Jew.

Your character embarks on a journey to France, where you are met by indifferent or suspicious bureaucrats. You may be abused by soldiers, sent to prison, made to crawl and beg, exploited by smugglers, helped by aid workers, yelled at by the police. With a small group of people who have chosen the same character, you will pass through a realistic-looking refugee camp, a border post or a minefield and a sweatshop.

All paths invariably lead to a French immigration office and endless red tape and waiting. To add an edge to your 90-minute journey, actors in uniform -- many refugees themselves -- play soldiers, aid workers, police, and officials.

"The first time I went through the tour myself, I couldn't finish it. It was too painful," Cisarova says. "But I wanted to show people what it is to be a refugee. People think that we come to make money but it's not true. I never thought that France was a paradise. I didn't have a choice."

Some visitors giggle or look bored, but after a certain time most plunge into their role. A few -- especially young people -- fight fiercely to get their papers. Some identify so strongly with their character that they start talking a pseudo-dialect they associate with their personage' language; others have to run away, says Cecile Delalande, the exhibit's coordinator. "Little by little, something happens between the actors and the visitors -- often when people identify with their character's humiliation and helplessness," Delalande says.

At the end, visitors are shocked to find out that only four of the 12 characters are given official refugee status -- which reflects the experience of their real-life counterparts. The others either have gone underground or have been forced to leave the country.

"I feel very touched and indignant because my character waited for three years without an answer," says Toure Mamadu, a 30-year-old philosophy student. After a long pause, he adds: "It paralleled my own experience." As a journalist in Mauritania, he wrote articles criticizing his government, he explains -- was arrested twice, then fled. "Just like my character, officials asked for proof of persecution. But when you are a refugee you don't have official papers."

"We were immersed in a world that we didn't know too much about," says Gilbert Pincay, 44, from Nice. "When we emerged, we felt uneasy. It's definitely going to make me think about their condition."

"The actors made us realize that we were nothing," says Catherine Levieuge, a 19-year-old student who took the role of Pavel, the Russian Jew. "We felt like pawns, rejected between all the different administrations, and we didn't understand why."

"An Unusual Journey," says coordinator Delalande, is a very personal experience. "It doesn't really matter whether people get into their personage or not - and it's obviously more difficult for an adult to do so. What's important is that it opens a dialogue, it makes people think."

Since the exhibit opened here, more than 20,000 people have embarked on the journey -- it has been to Belgium and Italy and will go to Germany next, and has generated inquiries from Spain, the U.S., Israel, Russia and Sweden, Delalande says.

"If tomorrow, some of these people start to reflect about the 'stranger' and our relationship with one another; if they start questioning what is the validity of a democracy that cannot guarantee asylum to those who are persecuted, then we'll have met our challenge," says a member of one of the sponsoring groups.