Contact Us

Performance and Migration website is designed to support any researcher, student or specialist in completing literature reviews, essays, publications or more in the field of Theatre and Migration by providing an easily accessible archive of research which has been compiled and sorted into several comprehensive collections

Migration, Colonialism, and Forced Displacement

This section presents works that uncover problems connected with colonialism, as this notion is closely linked with migration studies.

The vast amount of material discussed is proficiently structured in five topical chapters: ‘The Macaronic Stage’ gives an impressive overview of mainly Western plays of different eras, and this strategy has been used to characterize ‘barbaric’ outsiders; it thus stands in the tradition of theatrical verisimilitude. Next, the author exemplifies the qualities of ‘Dialect Theatre’ in a case study on the history of Italian comedy, whereas the third chapter, ‘Postcolonial Heteroglossia’, goes even further: not only does it deal with syncretic languages such as Creole or Pidgin, but it also assesses polyglot voices in monodramatic speech acts, thus acting as a model for ‘polynational’ communities in times of global migration. The cultural and linguistic diversity of company members is a precondition for contemporary heteroglot productions discussed in the following chapter, ‘Postmodern Language Play’. Carlson’s proposals in his final chapter – such as intrafictional or simultanous translation, sub- or supertitles, and so on – are all epistemologically inspired by Ingarden’s concept of the ‘side text’, thus based on the use of supplementary linguistic sign systems. (from the review – https://login.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/speaking-tongues-languages-at-play-theatre/docview/221531915/se-2?accountid=14701 )

This book explores the fields of performance studies and theatre history, and to larger issues of global cultural exchange. The authors offer a provocative argument for rethinking the scholarly assessment of how diverse performative cultures interact, how they are interwoven, and how they are dependent upon each other. This volume uses international case studies to explore the politics of globalization, looking at new paternalistic forms of exchange and the new inequalities emerging from it. These case studies are guided by the principle that processes of interweaving performance cultures are, in fact, political processes. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Amid controversy and fanfare, the year 2003 was declared Djazaïr or Year of Algeria in France. Not surprisingly, Algerian and French organizers and artists alike faced the challenge of determining how to commemorate a long and contentious colonial and post-colonial history set in the more recent context of a brutal civil war. Algeria’s Berber population, with its long history of resistance to repressive governmental policies, organized protests and a boycott against the government’s sanctioned role as “official” purveyor of Algerian culture in the context of the 2003 program. This latest controversy is another reminder of the Algerian nation’s long and arduous struggle toward self-definition, as played out both within and outside of its borders. For Algerian playwrights and performers living in Paris, the past, both distant and recent, asserts itself as an omnipresent and seemingly inescapable backdrop against which the creative process takes place. This paper briefly outlines that backdrop before exploring the various ways that Algerian playwrights have articulated exile over the past thirty years. (from the article)

This dissertation rethinks applied theatre facilitation from a hemispheric perspective, to revalue its impact. A motivation for this research is the sparse dissemination of contemporary approaches to applied theatre coming from Latin America. Most of the existing texts in English are products of the Global North and inadvertently reproduce (neo)colonial epistemologies; a more decolonial framework is needed, from the perspective of the Global South, to allow a focus on experiential knowledge from below. The author looks at case studies in Latin American contexts of (de)humanization, from immigrant detention centers to victims’ groups, from displacement, disappearance and deportation to privileged detachment, in Colombia, Chile and California. Each case study generates distinct insights about negotiating complicity and resistance within violent state/institutional processes of isolation and confinement (understood here as dehumanizing enclosures). The main argument is that the impact of applied theatre is not only the effect on our ideas and (inter)actions, as in social change, but also a widened sense of what is possible in terms of ways of being and becoming in/with the world. (by the author – at the link above)

This book travels alongside “Nanay,” a site-responsive theatre production staging archived testimonies of Filipino women involved in Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). Through Nanay, Johnston, Pratt, and their collaborators seek to challenge the presumed generosity of the LCP program – a program that offers participants the opportunity to apply for permanent residency after 24 months of service – by shedding light on how, in practice, the conditions of the program leave participants vulnerable to exploitation and marginalization. Johnston and Pratt argue that it is important to bring shared Indigenous and migrant experiences to light, as “silences about histories of international intimacies, like the history of Filipinos and Tlingit stop us from knowing other ways of relating” which could be tools for imagining the future (p. 143). Throughout the book Johnston and Pratt grapple with the politics of turning research into performance. (from the review – https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/2284 )

The article analyzes the discursive strategies of the migrant memory in the Spanish dramaturgy in the early years of the 21st century. The study reconstructs the “broken memories” of foreign immigration in Spain as a result of the simultaneous consolidative and deconstructive processes of the national historical modeling within a dialectical work between memory and forgetting. Jeronimo Lopez Mozo, Carles Batlle, Ignacio del Moral, Juan Diego Botto, Alberto de Casso Basterrechea and Malco Arija Martinez’s dramas relate the traumatic experience caused by the displacement of the migrant and the break of the historical linearity of its origin, by questioning the collective memory as a project of national homogeneity. The dramatic structure facilitates the deconstruction of the elements that maintain the historical narratives and subvert them in the theatrical reconstruction of the “postmemory”. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Kheireddine Lerdjam is an Algerian director, working between Algeria and France. This life of wandering between two countries and thus two cultures plays an important role in his productions. In Page en construction, he stages his own universe, based essentially on a cultural transfer from one shore to another in a spirit of tolerance, of cultural dialogue and acceptance of the Other. Lardjam’s play depicts a common history that links two countries, through the story of an exiled man.

This book can be separated in three sections: 1. Discussion sections with artists, academics and organisers about issues of displacement. The author focused on individuals who, by force or by choice, find themselves dealing with the issues of displacement. For all the people she had conversations with, the hardships of being displaced are both an existential ordeal and an opportunity to exercise their creativity. All of them deal very differently with the issues of displacement, nostalgia, hospitality and loss of space/country. 2. ‘Misplaced Women?’ 3. Provocations: The final stage of this research was an open invitation that the author extended to artists, academics and writers, to think and explore the ramifications of displacement – the disruption, confusion and instability it causes. This helped to see how art can cut through rigid territories, political hostilities and make us see hidden histories. (by the author – at the link above)

The book provides a wide survey of theatre and performance practices related to the experience of global movements, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Given the largest number of people ever suffering from forced displacement today, much of the book centres around the topic of refuge and exile and the role of theatre in addressing these issues. The book is structured in six sections, the first of which is dedicated to the major theoretical concepts related to the field of theatre and migration including exile, refuge, displacement, asylum seeking, colonialism, human rights, globalization, and nomadism. The subsequent sections are devoted to several dozen case studies across various geographies and time periods that highlight, describe and analyse different theatre practices related to migration. The volume serves as a prestigious reference work to help theatre practitioners, students, scholars, and educators navigate the complex field of theatre and migration. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This essay is an examination of the llanto (wail) as political performance praxis through documenting and reflecting on the collective work of Cherríe Moraga, Celia Herrera Rodríguez and approximately twenty-five artists to stage a PerformaProtesta at San Diego immigrant detention centers following the separation of migrant families during the summer of 2018. The following essay is a reflection on how Chicana/Latina/Caribeña storytelling and embodiment intervenes at the site of the colonial wound, and on how we rescript ourselves into old tales to learn (again) how to move through newly opened (old) wounds. As such, it tells its own story about migration, patriarchal motherhood, and colonial relations to land and water. (from the article)

The authors investigate “melodramatic strategies” that artists and migrants themselves employ to shape recognizable stories of victims, villains, heroes, or martyrs in an effort to obtain human rights and more tangible benefits. The scholars adopt an interdisciplinary lens, meshing sociology, performance studies, ethnography, and cultural studies to postulate that migrants’ accounts are scripted and “cast” and to show how those dramas are often repeated. The book examines the ways in which circulating migrant melodramas might be helpful or harmful, suggesting that mises en scène of suffering might undermine migrants’ agency and lure the public into ignoring the underlying, systemic roots that disempower and exclude migrants. The study specifically foregrounds Mexican and Central American migrants to the United States and interweaves “real” stories of advocates and migrants at various stages in their journey. (from the review – https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/article/852160 )

This article analyses ways in which emergent categories of performance and participatory art in the 1970s initiated, intensified, and continue to sustain questions about who and what could be subject of art and its institutional history in the West. The article details ways in which migrant artists Rasheed Araeen and David Medalla have historically been received through interpretive schemata produced by assumptions of ‘ethnic tradition’, as well as inaccurate and reductive notions of the authentic encounter in performance. Araeen’s Paki Bastard (1977) and Medalla’s Down with the Slave Trade! (1968-71) are analysed amongst other works in relation to queer, feminist and postcolonial approaches to historicity. This elucidates a set of formal and political strategies whereby decentred, seemingly quotidian, institutionally ‘unauthorised’, fabulative, and queer forms of culture and knowledge are engaged in a way that sustains conflicts of visibility and representation in a state of generative contestation. (by the author)

This book is premised on the belief in the revitalizing power of arts-informed approaches to social justice work; it affirms and invites creative responses to personal, community, and political struggles and aspirations. The projects described in the book address themes of colonization, displacement and forced migration, sexual violence, ableism, and vicarious trauma. Each chapter shows how art can facilitate transformation: by supporting processes of conscientization and enabling re- storying of selves and identities; by contributing to community and cultural healing, sustainability and resilience; by helping us understand and challenge oppressive social relations; and by deepening experiences, images, and practices of care. Social Work Artfully: Beyond Borders and Boundaries emerges from collaboration between researchers, educators, and practitioners in Canada and South Africa. It offers examples of arts-informed interventions that are attentive to diversity, attuned to various forms of personal and communal expression, and cognizant of contemporary economic and political conditions. (provided by OMNI)

The area of post-colonial studies is primarily concerned with how societies and cultures have been affected through the processes of colonization: Canada is considered by many literary and cultural critics to be such a nation, not only due to its historical lineage as a settler colony but also by playing host to multi-cultural immigrant communities that bring with them their own histories embedded in colonialism. Performing Back aims to generate discussion about the different kinds of theatrical and political output this country is generating and fills a glaring void in current theatre scholarship in Canada. This collection of plays examines topics such as race, ethnicity, imperialism, and notions of “otherness” insofar as they intersect with the broader theme of post-colonial theatre. The volume includes Yvette Nolan’s The Birds, a Native retelling of the Aristophanes play: Camyar Chai, Guillermo Verdecchia, and Marcus Youssef’s The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, a satirical play on Western neo-colonial forays into Iraq: and Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s Salome’s Clothes, a harrowing domestic tragedy set in Côte d’Ivoire. (from the book jacket)