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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

North, Central America

North America as a whole

Cuban migration to Europe and America (North, Central and South) has designed a creative and pedagogical map that expands its original theatrical geography into the new “lived spaces” – sometimes these being bilingual spaces. In the last fifty years Cuban migrants have processed their journeys of displacement by recovering their own cultural History through the generation of new Imaginaries and Institutions, creating in consequence new aesthetic scenarios articulated by a “frontal discourse” or a “rhetorical tissue” (Azor). These new aesthetic scenarios reveal the multicultural dialogue of a transcending “cubanidad”. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Emphasizing the resilience of theatre arts in the midst of significant political change, this book spotlights the emergence of new performance styles in the wake of collapsed political systems. Centering on theatrical works from the late nineteenth century to the present, twelve original essays written by prominent theatre scholars showcase the development of new work after social revolutions, independence campaigns, the overthrow of monarchies, and world wars. Global in scope, this book features performances occurring across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The essays attend a range of live events—theatre, dance, and performance art—that stage subaltern experiences and reveal societies in the midst of cultural, political, and geographic transition. This collection is an engaging resource for students and scholars of theatre and performance; world history; and those interested in postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and transnationalism. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The author’s stated goal is to enhance and intensify the discourse on theater and nationalism in different countries, distinct historical periods, and diverse cultures, and in the book she offers broad views of the celebration of culture and history in the US, Mexico, Canada, and various European and Asian countries. The book focuses not only on the theater’s power to convey national nostalgia for a country’s greatest moments, but also on the relationship between the construction and/or subversion of cultural identity and the force of politics both inside and outside the culture. A broad perspective emerges, thanks to the range of essays. (from the review – https://login.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/staging-nationalism-essays-on-theatre-national/docview/225759368/se-2?accountid=14701 )

This paper discusses how the visual arts engage in representing border crossing experiences and, more specifically, how art interrupts border security practices and their rituals. After introducing the history of North American border art and different approaches to issues of border crossing, the paper will concentrate on specific works. It argues that the selected works of art perform interventions that confront the public with the borderlands as a place of violence and death. At the same time, artists are shown to employ different artistic strategies of symbolically re-possessing the borderlands for undocumented migrants who – when crossing it – experienced it as an existential obstacle. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This collection on theatre and performance and the ‘exilic’ voice comprises eleven essays that examine from various academic points of view the presentation and representation of ‘Other/ed’ bodies, languages, and territories on (mostly) US stages. It investigates dramatic and performative renderings of ‘America’ as an exilic place, investigating how ‘America’ and exile are imagined, challenged and theatricalized in the works of various theatre artists in the light of the current political climate in the USA. (provided by the publisher)

Although current theories of diaspora argue for a break between an older irrevocable migration from one nation to another and a new transnational movement between host country and birthplace, research on nineteenth- as well as twentieth-century North America demonstrates that earlier migration also had a transnational dimension. The cultural consequences of this two-way traffic include syncretic performance forms, institutions, and audiences, whose legitimacy depended on engagement with but not total assimilation in local conventions and on the mobilization of touristic nostalgia in, say, Cantonese opera in California or Bavarian-American musicals in New York, to appeal to nativist and immigrant consumers. Today, syncretic theatre of diaspora is complicated on the one hand by a theatre of diasporic residence, in which immigrants dramatize inherited conflicts in the host country, such as Québécois separatism in Canada, along with problems of migrants, among them South Asians, and on the other by a theatre of non-residence, touring companies bringing theatre from the home country, say India, to ‘non-resident Indians’ and local audiences in the United States. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas is the first collection of essays to discuss the presence of Greek drama across the continents and archipelagos of the Americas from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. The classics have never been tied by geographical nor linguistic boundaries, and in the case of the Americas long colonial histories have often imposed those boundaries arbitrarily. This compendious volume tracks networks across continents and oceans and uncovers the ways in which the shared histories and practices in the performance arts in the Americas have routinely defied national boundaries. Lavishly illustrated and with contributions from Classicists, Latin American specialists, Theatre and Performance theorists, and historians, there are also interviews with writers. This 52-chapter volume seeks to define the complex contours of the reception of Greek drama in the Americas. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book brings together essays on theatre by people of African descent in North America, Cuba, Italy, the UK, Israel and Tasmania. Several chapters present overviews of particular national contexts, others offer insights into play texts or specific performances. Offering a mix of academic and practitioner’s points of views, Volume 8 in the African Theatre series analyses and celebrates various aspects of African diasporic theatre worldwide. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book is the first edited collection to respond to an undeniable resurgence of critical activity around the controversial theoretical term ‘interculturalism’ in theatre and performance studies. Long one of the field’s most vigorously debated concepts, intercultural performance has typically referred to the hybrid mixture of performance forms from different cultures (typically divided along an East-West or North-South axis) and its related practices frequently charged with appropriation, exploitation or ill-founded universalism. The collection offers case studies from Asia, Africa, Australasia, Latin America, North America, and Western Europe which debate the possibilities and limitations of this theoretical turn towards a ‘new’ interculturalism. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)   

The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration 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)

  • Murphy, K.M. (2018). Mapping Memory: Visuality, Affect, and Embodied Politics in the Americas. New York: Fordham University Press. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/63128

In this book the author investigates the use of memory as a means of contemporary sociopolitical intervention. She focuses specifically on visual case studies, including documentary film, photography, performance, new media, and physical places of memory, from sites ranging from the Southern Cone to Central America and the U.S.–Mexican borderlands. Murphy develops new frameworks for analyzing how visual culture performs as an embodied agent of memory and witnessing, arguing that visuality is inherently performative. By analyzing the performative elements, or strategies, of visual texts—such as embodiment, reenactment, haunting, and the performance of material objects and places Murphy elucidates how memory is both anchored in and extracted from specific bodies, objects, and places. Drawing together diverse theoretical strands, Murphy originates the theory of “memory mapping”, which tends to the ways in which memory is strategically deployed in order to challenge official narratives that often neglect or designate as transgressive certain memories or experiences. Ultimately, Murphy argues, memory mapping is a visual strategy to ask, and to challenge, why certain lives are rendered visible and thus grievable and others not. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This collection imagines performance broadly, including examples from theatre and dance, museum exhibits, sonic art, political performance art etc. Three essays, Josh Kun’s account of border sound art, José Manuel Valenzuela Arce’s account of Minerva Tapia’s border geography, and Ana Elena Puga’s account of melodramatic border crossing, directly invoke the paradigmatic landscape of the United States/Mexico border. Others productively reimagine questions of border through various Caribbean sites, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and First Nations and Canadian geographies. (from the review – https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/doi/full/10.1080/10462937.2014.941388 )

This essay attempts to show how contemporary South Asian American theater deals with a wide range of South Asian American experience and in so doing has created a “new aesthetic” within American theater. The plays under study are about the old and new home, about people assimilating into the mainstream or navigating between two cultures or even negotiating a transnational identity. They deal with contested ideas of nation, nationality and allegiance, and also explore the South Asian female body in the new culture. (by the author)

The book provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. The author reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory-conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances-offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani etc., the author explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit, Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The United States

This article discusses the musical “America” by playwright Guido Cataldo. It recreates the emotions and dramatic conditions of Italian migrants to the US in the early 20th century through an original expressive compound of drama, music, songs and prose.

The author explores how young Black women in a Detroit homeless shelter contest stereotypes, critique their status as partial citizens, and negotiate poverty, racism, and gender violence to create and imagine lives for themselves. Based on eight years of fieldwork at the Fresh Start shelter, Cox shows how the shelter’s residents employ strategic methods she characterizes as choreography to disrupt the social hierarchies and prescriptive narratives that work to marginalize them. Cox also uses these young women’s experiences to tell larger stories: of Detroit’s history, the Great Migration, deindustrialization, the politics of respectability, and the construction of Black girls and women as social problems. With Shapeshifters Cox gives a voice to young Black women who find creative and non-normative solutions to the problems that come with being young, Black, and female in America. (provided by OMNI)

In this paper the author reports on the use of Theater of the Oppressed in a long-term critical ethnography. Building on the work of performative ethnographers, she reviews the literature on the uses of drama in qualitative research and explores the traditional research lines that are blurred in the process. More importantly, she details the experiences collecting and analyzing data using Theater of the Oppressed. In other published accounts of performative ethnography, data collection is emphasized and data analysis is not usually discussed, in part, because the line between data collection and analysis is blurred in the use of theater as inquiry. The author not only examines that blurring but suggests a method of analysis that others might find useful. The study focused on the integration of English language learners in a Midwestern U.S. high school. The author used Theater of the Oppressed with teachers to explore their role in the bullying activities of students. The analysis reveals changes in awareness witnessed through the drama. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This paper draws on press reviews, film production and distribution records, and interviews with Mexican Americans in order to illuminate the historical development of the spanish-speaking audience in the United states through the 1930s. Spanish speakers in Los Angeles, San Antonio, New York, and other cities devoted small-town theaters and movie palaces to the exhibition of Mexican film, provided the fan base for its thriving star system, and made the United States a critical market for its films. In particular, Mexican audiences living and working in the U.S. embraced the comedia ranchera, a uniquely Mexican musical genre, and helped to sustain its popularity through the “golden age” of Mexican cinema. (from the article)

In Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones, Marta Effinger-Crichlow expertly draws together four case studies of African American women to describe how black women constructed “western space” over time. Using an interdisciplinary approach with a focus on history and theatre, Effinger-Crichlow explains how African American women’s westward movement reflected everyday performances of migration, as well as symbolic and intellectual journeys. (from the review – https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5323/jafriamerhist.102.2.0260 )

This chapter discusses multiculturalism in theatre, covering the tendencies in the US. The special attention is devoted to the notion of the “Negro theatre”.

Studies that utilize participatory action research (PAR) methods in immigrant communities draw on participatory methods to explore immigrant health and incorporation. In this paper, the author argues that PAR methodology and principles can be maximized in immigrant communities if it asserts migrants’ lived experiences as “expertise” on the global institutionalization of migration and low-wage migrant work in the US. She provides data on the Filipino migrant experience and a PAR project with Filipino domestic workers in New York City. Also the author discusses kuwentohan, or talk story in Tagalog, and theater as forms of participatory collection and analysis that captures the complex dynamics of migration from macro to micro scales. The political potential of PAR in migrant communities presents itself when migrant workers recount their own experience and begin to understand that those individual stories are part of a larger story of forced migration, labor export policy, and low-wage work. (by the author – at the link above)

This article explores the history of El Cine Yost (The Yost Theater) in Santa Ana, California, and the role of the Louis and Phoebe Olivos Sr. family in creating space for the development of ethnic Mexican identity and community in Orange County, California from 1930 to 1990. The author argues that El Cine Yost exemplifies the central connections between space, place, and identity in the lived experiences of ethnic Mexicans across the US-Mexico borderlands. Further, this history disrupts the master narrative of Orange County as a place of Anglo-American/European settler history, which has ignored and left undocumented the affirmative presence and contributions of Latinas/os in the region. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cleveland, Ohio became an increasingly important destination for European immigrants and African American migrants from the rural South. In this dissertation, the author examines Cleveland’s diasporic music theater traditions — namely German, Yiddish, African American, and Slovenian — and their connection to issues of ethnicity and immigration. Despite having different languages, stagings, and meanings, all of these groups were working toward shared underlying goals and their efforts were all carried out on the musical stage. (by the author – at the link above)

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)

Horowitz’s case studies explore a tension in the art of 20th-century performers who emigrated from Europe or Russia: they “both stayed foreign and became American.” The author extends his domain beyond music into other performing arts, examining key exemplars in each discipline such as Igor Stravinsky in music composition, George Balanchine in ballet, and Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg in Hollywood. His understanding of the political nuances of immigrants’ artistic work, influenced by the circumstances in which they fled their native countries, is fascinating. Yet Horowitz emphasizes the Americanization of the artworks at the expense of their European roots. What Horowitz lacks in balance he more than makes up for in emotion, and in expounding on the political resonance of the immigrants’ art, he composes an enlightening, informative read. (from the review – https://go-gale-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=otta77973&id=GALE|A171442951&v=2.1&it=r )

The book maps a previously underexamined territory of social, political, communal, cultural and personal performance that often defines the lives of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, Australia, Europe and the United States. Chapter 1 focuses on what Jeffers calls a ‘bureaucratic performance’, when the asylum seekers are forced to ‘perform’, as convincingly as possible, their stories of war, torture and flight in the courtrooms of their host countries (p. 16). Chapter 2 critically engages with the ways refugees are portrayed by the artists/representatives of these host cultures. It addresses the ‘complex question of the aesthetic representation of suffering’ (p. 72). Chapter 3 looks at the refugees’ own performative interventions, when they ‘stop outside the expectations of silence and invisibility that are often imposed upon them’ (p. 14) and thus act upon their own ‘wishful performatives’ (p. 93). In her last chapter, Jeffers studies the refugees’ ‘cultural expressions’. (from the review – https://www.proquest.com/docview/1504140544?accountid=14701&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals )

Here in This Island We Arrived takes readers on a vivid tour of Shakespearean performances in New York City in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as Elisabeth Kinsley closely scrutinizes “documented scenarios in which Anglo-identified people, perspectives, and experiences intersected with non-Anglo people, perspectives, and experiences via Shakespeare in Progressive Era New York, the entry city for most immigrant groups and the vanguard of American stage culture at this time”. By making fresh connections among intersecting categories of Shakespearean performance, publicity, and reception, Kinsley’s study reassesses what it meant to produce, perform, and enjoy Shakespeare in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, and the implications of this material for how we understand key questions of nationality, ethnicity, and race during this period.

  • Kostiainen, A. (2014). Finns in the United States: A History of Settlement, Dissent, and Integration. (1st ed.). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/28710

A fresh and up-to-date analysis of Finnish Americans, this volume lays the groundwork for exploring this unique culture through a historical context, followed by an overview of the overall composition and settlement patterns of these newcomers. The authors investigate the vivid ethnic organizations Finns created, as well as the cultural life they sought to preserve and enhance while fitting into their new homeland. Also explored are the complex dimensions of Finnish-American political and religious life, as well as the exodus of many radical leftists to Soviet Karelia in the 1930s. Through the lens of multiculturalism, transnationalism, and whiteness studies, the authors of this volume present a rich portrait of this distinctive group. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The author argues that understanding Asian immigration to the United States is fundamental to understanding the racialized economic and political foundations of the nation. She argues that rather than attesting to the absorption of cultural difference into the universality of the national political sphere, the Asian immigrant – at odds with the cultural, racial, and linguistic forms of the nation – displaces the temporality of assimilation. In this uniquely interdisciplinary study, Lowe examines the historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic meanings of immigration in relation to Asian Americans. Extending the range of Asian American critique, Immigrant Acts will interest readers concerned with race and ethnicity in the United States, American cultures, immigration, and transnationalism. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This study sheds light on the rhetoric of ethnic self-expression which contemporary American minority playwrights use to explore their diasporic identities and empower their ethnic communities. It also explores the nature of contemporary ethnic theaters and the function they serve in assimilating people of diverse ethnic backgrounds into the American mainstream culture. The American plays discussed in this article include the Chinese-American David Henry Hwang’s F.O.B., that depicts the social dilemmas of Chinese immigrants, and M. Butterfly, that has problematized the entire notion of ethnicity and has revealed the distorted stereotypical images of oriental cultures as perceived by the West; the Korean-American playwrights Julia Cho’s The Architecture of Loss, and Philip Kan Gotanda’s Day Standing on its Head; the African-American Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West, which portrays from a feminist perspective the Blacks’ Great Migration; Hispanic theater represented by Milcha Sánchez-Scott’s Latina, and Silvia Gonzalez’ The Migrant Farmworker’s Son. The plays contain themes that range from displacement or diaspora, to exile, migration, border-crossing to create new worlds, nationhood, belonging, cultural hybridity, and even invisibility. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This article examines devices of comedy, laughter and dramatic humour as technologies of ethics when it comes to staging migration in contemporary theatre. Looking at a tragic farce Hunting Cockroaches (1985), written by the Polish theatre artist Janusz Głowacki during his American exile, and a domestic melodrama Kim’s Convenience (2012), written by a Korean Canadian Ins Choi, this article examines comedy as a particular dramatic model that can challenge staging migrants as agentless and voiceless victims. (the abstract from the article)

This chapter seeks a deeper understanding of the encounters and exchanges between Africa and Harlem by employing cinema, the arts, and literature to glean insights into larger trends. The Black Renaissance underway—with its ongoing conversation with Africa—is not happening predominantly in literature as it did during the original Harlem Renaissance movement. Instead, today’s ever-growing African presence and influence on the cultural scene in Harlem encompasses stage productions, film, music, photography, and other arts side-by-side with literature. (provided by the publisher)

The Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance traces how manifestations of Latine self-determination in contemporary U.S. theatre and performance practices affirm the value of Latine life in a theatrical culture that constantly and consciously strives to undermine it. This collection draws on fifty interdisciplinary contributions written by some of the leading Latine theatre and performance scholars and practitioners in the U.S. The project reveals the continued growth of Latine theatre and performance, through essays covering, but not limited to playwriting, casting practices, representation, training, wrestling with anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity, theatre for young audiences, community empowerment, and the market forces that govern the U.S. theatre industry. This book enters conversations in performance studies, ethnic studies, American studies, and Latina/e/o/x studies by taking up performance scholar Diana Taylor’s call to consider the ways that “embodied and performed acts generate, record, and transmit knowledge.” This collection is an essential resource for students, scholars and theatremakers seeking to explore, understand and further the huge range and significance of Latine performance. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The purpose of this work is to provide a history of Arab American identity formation, specifically its transformation from the emergence of a sense of political identity in the late 1960s to the post-9/11 decade, and to analyze how Arab Americans during these periods addressed issues of discrimination and persecution through performance. In constructing this history, the author refers to the academic works of early Arab American scholars/activists and the creative works of contemporary Arab American writers and performers. In addition, the author draws upon key analytical concepts from Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s theory of racial formation; Judith Butler’s work on derealization, mourning, and violence; Amir Marvasti and Karyn D. McKinney’s conceptualizations of coping/resistance strategies; and Edward W. Said’s work on racial antipathy, media studies, and representation. (from the dissertation)

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 book provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the Latinx performing arts in what is now the U.S. since the sixteenth century. Volume II looks in depth at the experiences of Latinx individuals on theatre and performance, including Miguel Piñero, Lin-Manuel Miranda, María Irene Fornés, Nilo Cruz, and John Leguizamo, as well as the important role of transnational migration in Latinx communities and identities across the U.S. Overall this book offers an accessible and comprehensive understanding of the field and is ideal for students, researchers, and instructors of theatre studies with an interest in the diverse and complex history of Latinx theatre and performance. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the Latinx performing arts in what is now the U.S. since the sixteenth century. Volume I provides a chronological overview of the evolution of the Latinx community within the U.S., spanning from the 1500s to today, with an emphasis on the Chicano artistic renaissance initiated by Luis Valdez and the Teatro Campesino in the 1960s. This book offers an accessible and comprehensive understanding of the field and is ideal for students, researchers, and instructors of theatre studies with an interest in the diverse and complex history of Latinx theatre and performance. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Amanda Rogers’ monograph, which tackles transnational Asian theatre from a spatial perspective, highlights the wide range of approaches which can be taken to examine questions of Asian identity and ethnicity. The author explores the networks between artists of Asian descent (the bulk of them Singaporean Chinese travelling between English-speaking territories) as they perform ‘Asian’ work in international festivals and (often ethnically identified) theatres in places such as Singapore, London, Edinburgh, New York, and Los Angeles. The book is divided into three introductory chapters and six case studies. If the theoretical framework is consistent and nuanced, the disparity of case studies makes the work slightly unbalanced. Overall, Rogers’ work will provide an excellent point of departure for those interested in thinking through the triangular relationship between performance, ethnicity, and space. (from the review – https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/doi/full/10.1080/14631369.2016.1249649 )

The book discusses the applied theatre with Syrian refugees, while the author offers a personal account of his experiences using applied theater techniques (from Boal’s image theatre to monologue and movement work, among others) within different contexts: a refugee camp (Amman, Jordan), a refugee resettlement organization (Hamburg, Germany), and a religious nonprofit (Philadelphia). The book presents concise narrations of applied theatre techniques in practice, while also outlining the ethical and political considerations of conducting applied theatre workshops with refugee communities. The book will fit well in discussions of ethics and applied theatre practice, the politics of psycho/social support in humanitarian interventions, drama therapy, and theatre for social change. (from the review – https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/article/802114 )

In response to the conventionally passive and limiting portrayals of Arab and Muslim women, playwrights such as Heather Raffo, Rohina Malik, Laila Farah, and Bina Sharif created a theatrical form of resistance and revision. Through an analysis of the theatrical self-representation of contemporary Arab and Muslim American female playwrights and solo performers, this dissertation examines the ways in which these one-woman shows are challenging the stereotypical racial discourses perpetuated about Arabs and Muslims after September 11. The playwrights in this study use solo performance as a means of negotiating current tensions surrounding the representation of their race, culture, and gender, simultaneously demonstrating and critiquing the construction of collective identities. Within the chapters of this study, the author investigates the artists’ use of narrative structure, costumes and props, language, and politics in their efforts to redefine the contemporary representation of Arab and Muslim American women on stage. (abstract from the dissertation)

During the past thirty years Latin American theatre has emerged as one of the most dynamic, activist, and politically committed theatres of modern times. As a consequence of massive migration from Latin America to the United States, many practices in the Latin American theatre have been transplanted to this country in order to fulfill the cultural needs of immigrant groups. An example of this phenomenon is clearly seen in the Puerto Rican theatre produced in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century. A group that is presently focusing its work on these same goals from both social and political perspectives is Teatro Pregones. This dissertation is a case study which analyses the presence and the work of Teatro Pregones in the United States during the years 1979 to 1993. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

In this paper the author suggests comparing recent critical approaches and debates in the cultural field of transnational migration studies, with a focus on ‘cross-cultural’ and ‘post-migrant’ theatres. This focus will be narrowed down by looking particularly at the discourses of Turkish migration and diaspora surrounding the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in Berlin (Germany), the Arcola Ala-Turka company in Dalston-Hackney (UK), Theater RAST in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), the Turkish American Repertory Theater in Baldwin New York (U.S.), the ReOrient Festival in San Francisco (U.S.) and the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles (U.S.). The author questions the differences in the companies’ self-definitions in relation to their cultural climates and the retellings of the different pathways artists make within the scope of their works and careers. In addition, he explores how these founding ‘narratives of self’ in view of an increased social mobility could be explained through the wider discourses of transnational migration studies, as they are currently being developed in Europe and the U.S. (written by the author – access at the link above)

Through a series of chapters that offer careful, informed, and thought-provoking close readings of works of American-Jewish culture from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1960-s Weber seeks to trace the dynamics of “the genealogy of Jewish affect among immigrants from Eastern Europe arriving here a century ago and their children.” Through his analyses of works of literature, film, theater broadcasting, and sound recordings, Weber tracks what Raymond Williams termed a “structure of feeling” that dominates much of American-Jewish culture in the immigrant and early post-immigrant period. (from the review – https://www.jstor.org/stable/23887318 )

  • Ybarra, P.A. (2017). Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. (1 ed.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/55917 

Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism traces how Latinx theater in the United States has engaged with the policies, procedures, and outcomes of neoliberal economics in the Americas from the 1970s to the present. Ybarra analyzes the work of playwrights María Irene Fornés, Cherríe Moraga, Michael John Garcés, Caridad Svich, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Victor Cazares, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Tanya Saracho, and Octavio Solis. In addressing histories of oppression in their home countries, these playwrights have newly imagined affective political and economic ties in the Americas. They also have rethought the hallmark movements of Latin politics in the United States—cultural nationalism, third world solidarity, multiculturalism—and their many discontents. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Canada

This article draws on several Canadian plays that recount immigrant experience, and each uses untranslated minority language in some form. When looked at together, they illustrate a variety of the possible effects that using untranslated language on stage can produce. When contemplating scripting “foreign” words, or when analyzing a performance that has done so, one needs to consider how language operates In the given linguistic, social and political context of the performance at hand, in particular, if one’s aim is to use minority language as resistance to a dominant language and culture, it’s necessary to be aware that the power relationship between the dominator and the dominated is constantly shifting.

This article argues that the choice of non-translation as the absolute staging of multilingual hospitality carries the promise of a more radical cohabitation and offers both critical and reparative encounters with bodies that resist mainstream recuperation. Beyond multicultural accommodation of diversity, non-translation as a politicized choice is examined through examples chosen from contemporary Asian Canadian and Afro-Caribbean Canadian drama, as well as Indigenous performance. Specifically, the article analyzes the deployment of multilingualism “from below” in front of mainstream Anglophone audiences. The decolonial practice of non-translation embraced by these playwrights contributes to the trend of “diversifying diversity” and promotes more balanced linguistic ecologies. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Nicole Cote examines literary representations of Franco-Canadians’ linguistic minorization as they negotiate with hegemonic English. She suggests that Franco-Canadian theatre reflects the self-translation of the minorities through its heterolinguism and stages their linguistic and cultural hybridity. These plays offer heteroglossic representations that bear witness to the multiple tensions of the minority and migrant communities. They represent the cultural/linguistic self-translation at work, reflecting identities torn between the need to forge a stable core and the adaptation necessary to survive as a minority within the hegemonic group. These dramatic representations attest, on a formal level, to the vulnerability of French in a minority context, as well as, on a thematic one, to the resilience of minority communities in constant self-translation, as shown in Elephant Wake, by Joey Tremblay; Sex, Lies et les Franco-Manitobains, L’annee du Big Mac, and Fort Mac, by Marc Prescott; and Rearview, by Gilles Poulin-Denis. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This article examines the potential cultural and political implications of a series of theatre workshops and presentations that took place in Ontario, Canada, between 2009 and 2011. The project, entitled Growing Together: A Celebration of Migrant Workers, involved extensive interviews with and the direct creative participation of regionally situated Latin American and Caribbean seasonal migrant agricultural workers. The theatrical activity under discussion is engaged via a number of key concerns from a text entitled ‘Affective Assemblages: Ethics beyond Enjoyment’ in which Simone Bignall proposes that the thought of Gilles Deleuze contains elements that can serve to amplify ‘the realm of practical ethics beyond rights-based and state-mediated sources of justice’ by embracing ‘unmediated qualities of interpersonal relationship as defining aspects of political and ethical life’. (the description provided by OMNI)

This is a study of cultural difference in contemporary Canadian theatre. Theatre in Canada has long been a forum for cultural communities to celebrate their traditions, but it has now emerged as a forum for staging stories that stretch beyond local and national communities. Combining archival research and performance analysis to discuss a set of performances mainly in Toronto, Staging Strangers offers a fresh look at how theatre can be an important site of cultural encounter in a global age. The book adopts the guiding metaphor of “the stranger” to discuss the many ways cultural difference is made to appear-or disappear-onstage. More than a descriptive text about a shift toward the global, the book offers a vision of theatre that contributes meaningfully to global ethics, that is, a sense of ethical esponsibility to global issues and distant strangers. (provided by the publisher – 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 )

This article discusses Antonine Maillet, an Acadian artist who has chosen to live and write in Quebec. Her work is nostalgic, but at the same time it is important for her to not sink into the cult of the past, but to safeguard the heritage while looking towards the future.

This study explores the potential of Canadian immigrant community-based theatre as a means of promoting empowerment among newcomers. Alongside an integrated literature review, the paper centres on a case study of a group of five Canadian immigrant women and their coordinator who participated in a community-based theatre project in Toronto called Tomorrow’s Time, funded by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and facilitated by Working Women Community Centre. The paper concludes that the processes involved in community-based theatre contributed to the participants’ personal and social empowerment in terms of developing confidence, acting skills, integration within communities, and involvement in peer education. (the abstract taken from the dissertation)

In the book the author lays out the geography, history, and primary theories of intercultural theatre. His central argument, that intercultural theatre must resist Western framing and be studied and practiced outside the perspective of Western egocentricity, enlists the theories of Bhabha, Balme, Lo, Gilbert, and Bharucha. Knowles clarifies terms such as transcultural, intracultural, multicultural, and cross-cultural, and—although he does not refer to it—a strength of this volume is his years as a player in the field, especially as a dramaturge, among intercultural theatres across Canada; his performance ecologies provide snapshot case studies of ethical theatre making in the multicultural city of Toronto, where dozens of diasporas intersect. Reaffirming that “intercultural performance has the potential to bring into being not merely new aesthetic forms but new social formations, new diasporic, hybrid, and intercultural social identities”, Knowles encourages us to reconsider the “standard” practice of reading the material theatre through an exclusively Western gaze. (from the review – Capraru, J. H., & Knowles, R. (2012). Theatre & Interculturalism. Theatre Survey, 53(2), 343-345. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557412000282 )

This book explores how Toronto stages diversity through its many intercultural theater companies and troupes. The book begins with a theoretical introduction to theatrical interculturalism. Subsequent chapters outline the historical and political context within which intercultural performance takes place; examine the ways in which Indigenous, Filipino, and Afro-Caribbean Canadian theater has developed play structures based on culturally specific forms of expression; and explore the ways that intercultural companies have used intermediality, modernist form, and intercultural discourse to mediate across cultures. This study will appeal to scholars, artists, and the theater-going public, including those in theater and performance studies, critical multiculturalism studies, diaspora studies, etc. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The essays in this volume map the history of “ethnic” and “multicultural” theatre in Canada, revealing the progression of minoritized performance from relegated “amateur status” to a position of prominence on the Canadian stage. The editors contextualize the changing face of “multicultural” theatre as it exists within the fraught space of Canadian nationhood, pointing to the importance of “intercultural” performance as a mechanism of national cohesion. The “ethnic” struggle for space in the realm of professional Canadian theatre illuminated, the essays contend with the question of represented identity in theatre, including concerns about the perpetuation of stereotypes.  Also the function of “cultural memory” in theatre, is explored, noting that “memory is performative” and “all cultural memory bridges difference.” Ultimately, this volume provides a relevant and timely contribution to the body of literature pertaining to “ethnic” theatre in Canada. (from the review – https://canlit.ca/article/representing-culture-in-canadian-theatre/ )

This article examines devices of comedy, laughter and dramatic humour as technologies of ethics when it comes to staging migration in contemporary theatre. Looking at a tragic farce Hunting Cockroaches (1985), written by the Polish theatre artist Janusz Głowacki during his American exile, and a domestic melodrama Kim’s Convenience (2012), written by a Korean Canadian Ins Choi, this article examines comedy as a particular dramatic model that can challenge staging migrants as agentless and voiceless victims. (the abstract from the article)

This is an interview with Wajdi Mouawad. Born in Lebanon in 1968, he experienced the start of the civil war and exile, first in France, then in Quebec where he created his first shows. He is a rare star in contemporary theater, and his sense of tragedy infuses his plays with a poetic intensity which ignites the spectators and, among them, a large number of young people.

This article discusses Incendies, the adaptation of the work Incendies The Blood of Promises by playwright Wajdi Mouawad, and staged in 2003 in France and Quebec. In this article the latter’s work is being situated within Quebec dramaturgy and migrant theater, and then the processes used by Mouawad in the theater, including spatio-temporality and stage writing, are being analyzed.

This article is a reflection on the use of theatre creation in qualitative research with migrant farm workers in Ontario, Canada. In this article the author examines how the fundamentally embodied and kinesthetic dimensions of seasonal agricultural workers’ lives in Canada highlight the need to seek out and develop corresponding embodied approaches that are able to access and accurately represent the fraught and dynamic nature of workers’ experiences. This article contributes to debates concerning the role of the arts in qualitative and action research, as well as to those researchers who are seeking innovative ways of designing and implementing qualitative research in the areas of precarious work and citizenship. (provided by the author – at the link above)

This article addresses a stated need within the food justice movement scholarship to increase the attention paid to the political socialization of hired farm hands in industrial agriculture. In Canada, tackling the problem of farm worker equity has particular social and political contours related to the Canadian horticultural industry’s reliance on a state-managed migrant agricultural labour program designed to fill the sector’s labour market demands. As Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) produces relations of ‘unfree labour’, engaging migrant farm workers in social movement initiatives can be particularly challenging. Critical educational interventions designed to encourage migrant farm workers’ contribution to contemporary social movements in Canada must therefore confront the socio-cultural obstacles that constrict migrant farm workers’ opportunities to participate as full members of their communities. In this article, I argue that social justice oriented approaches to community-based arts can provide a means for increasing the social movement contributions of farm workers employed through managed labour migration schema such as Canada’s SAWP. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Framed within the geopolitics of empathy, we describe the process of taking a testimonial play, based on verbatim research interview transcripts with Filipina domestic workers, their families, employers, and nanny agents in Vancouver, Canada, to the Philippines to present to audiences there, including to members of domestic workers’ families. Interviews with seven family members who attended the play offer some clues to assessing performance as a space for critical, sometimes uncomfortable forms of empathy. Rather than a purely affirming experience, we argue that empathy can lead to a fuller recognition of the suffering on which one’s good life depends and challenge fantasies of the good life, in this case, attainable through migration to Canada. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Rousseau, C., Gauthier, M.-F., Benoît, M., Lacroix, L., Moran, A., Viger Rojas, M., & Bourassa, D. (2006). Playing with identities, transforming shared realities: school theatre workshop for immigrant and refugee adolescents. Santé mentale au Québec, 31(2), 135‑152. https://doi.org/10.7202/014808ar Available at: Link to the source 

The drama workshop program described in this article was designed to facilitate the adjustment of newly arrived immigrant teens. The aim of the program is to make it easier for adolescents to adjust to their new environment through creative group work around identity issues. The workshops are inspired both from playback theater and from Boal’s form theater which emphasizes the collective transformation of the singular experience. The qualitative assessment of the program effects on the adolescents suggests that the workshops constitute a safe space of expression, in which the team and the ritual nature of the play hold the participants. The workshops also address the life transformation associated both with adolescence and migration and help the elaboration of the losses linked to the migratory journey and the construction of a hybrid identity. (provided by the author – at the link above)

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)

Mexico

This chapter considers the forms that Chicana/o and Latina/o studies have taken in Mexico. It also considers its history and development, as well as what can be called: Chicana and Latina interventions in the academic, artistic, literary, and cultural spheres of Mexico. The translation of Sandra Cisneros’ novel The House on Mango Street in 1994 by Elena Poniatowska represented a watershed in the reception and recognition of Chicana literature in Mexico. Experience in Mexico shows that, rather than talking about the incorporation of Chicanos/Latinos in the context of “studies,” what has been more effective in the Mexican national context and as an actual strategy to reach classrooms and research is the presence of specific authors and their theoretical and conceptual propositions in the curriculum. Feminists, theorists, and writers Norma Alarcon, Norma Klhan, Chela Sandoval, Gloria Anzaldua and Sandra Cisneros are beginning to be read in Mexican classrooms as part of a complex and powerful cultural theory that transcends borders. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This paper draws on press reviews, film production and distribution records, and interviews with Mexican Americans in order to illuminate the historical development of the spanish-speaking audience in the United states through the 1930s. Spanish speakers in Los Angeles, San Antonio, New York, and other cities devoted small-town theaters and movie palaces to the exhibition of Mexican film, provided the fan base for its thriving star system, and made the United States a critical market for its films. In particular, Mexican audiences living and working in the U.S. embraced the comedia ranchera, a uniquely Mexican musical genre, and helped to sustain its popularity through the “golden age” of Mexican cinema. (from the article)

This article explores the history of El Cine Yost (The Yost Theater) in Santa Ana, California, and the role of the Louis and Phoebe Olivos Sr. family in creating space for the development of ethnic Mexican identity and community in Orange County, California from 1930 to 1990. The author argues that El Cine Yost exemplifies the central connections between space, place, and identity in the lived experiences of ethnic Mexicans across the US-Mexico borderlands. Further, this history disrupts the master narrative of Orange County as a place of Anglo-American/European settler history, which has ignored and left undocumented the affirmative presence and contributions of Latinas/os in the region. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This article focuses on one of Violeta Luna’s pieces on undocumented migration to the US (Body Parted/Cuerpo Partido 2008), as well as two works dealing with Mexico’s current state of emergency: Réquiem por una tierra perdida/Requiem for a Lost Land (2010-2014) and Vírgenes y Diosas/Virgins and Goddesses (2014-2015). In order to explore what these works can tell us about our present, the author relies mainly on contemporary expansions of the concept of biopolitics first advanced by Michel Foucault. Additionally, the author finds a foothold in cultural critics such as Ana Longoni, Rustom Bharucha, and others who have questioned the epistemologies on art and politics prevalent in Western art history. (taken from the article)

Like earlier mother activism in Latin America, the annual Caravana de Madres Centroamericanas (Caravan of Central American Mothers) through Mexico strategically activates the traditional archetype of mothers as passive, pious, suffering victims whose self-abnegation forces them, almost against their will, out of their supposedly natural domestic sphere. Three elements, however, distinguish the caravana from earlier protests staged by mothers. First, this protest crosses national borders, functioning as a transnational pilgrimage to the memory of the disappeared relative. This stage-in-motion temporarily spotlights and claims the spaces traversed by undocumented migrants in Mexico, attempting to recast those migrants as victims of violence rather than as criminals. Second, through performances of both devotional motherhood and saintly motherhood, the caravana’s mother-based activism de-normalizes violence related to drugs and migration. Third, performances of family reunification staged by the caravana organizers take place in the few cases in which they manage to locate family members who have not fallen prey to violence but have simply resettled in Mexico and abandoned or lost touch with families left behind. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

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 )

Central America, Caribbean
  • García, C. S. (2004). Contested Discourses on National Identity: Representing Nicaraguan Immigration to Costa Rica. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 23(4), 434–445. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27733689

This article explores the ways in which the immigration of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica is represented by Costa Rican institutions and individuals through public discourses and everyday life. Three discourses are considered: intellectual claims, fictional works, and stories written by Nicaraguan children. The author talks about the most applauded fictional piece dealing with Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica has been a theatre play, ‘El Nica’.  (from the article)

The author focuses on how the play articulates the narratives of migration that prompted many Caribbean people to uproot from their homes on the islands and move to England in the post-war era. For some of them, these dreams of a new life became a reality, but they were experienced differently across genders and generations. Also the book discusses Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, the yard play which depicts the lives of a black community living in poverty in a shared tenement yard in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in the mid-1940s, showing how each of the characters carries dreams of escaping to create better lives for themselves and their families. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The essays in this book chart how women’s profound and turbulent experiences of migration have been articulated in writing, photography, art and film. As a whole, the volume gives an impression of a wide range of migratory events from women’s perspectives, covering the Caribbean Diaspora, refugees and slavery through the various lenses of politics and war, love and family. The contributors, which include academics and artists, offer both personal and critical points of view on the artistic and historical repositories of these experiences. This collection appeals to artists and scholars of the humanities, particularly within the social sciences; though there is much to recommend it to creatives seeking inspiration or counsel on the issue of migratory experiences. (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)

Like earlier mother activism in Latin America, the annual Caravana de Madres Centroamericanas (Caravan of Central American Mothers) through Mexico strategically activates the traditional archetype of mothers as passive, pious, suffering victims whose self-abnegation forces them, almost against their will, out of their supposedly natural domestic sphere. Three elements, however, distinguish the caravana from earlier protests staged by mothers. First, this protest crosses national borders, functioning as a transnational pilgrimage to the memory of the disappeared relative. This stage-in-motion temporarily spotlights and claims the spaces traversed by undocumented migrants in Mexico, attempting to recast those migrants as victims of violence rather than as criminals. Second, through performances of both devotional motherhood and saintly motherhood, the caravana’s mother-based activism de-normalizes violence related to drugs and migration. Third, performances of family reunification staged by the caravana organizers take place in the few cases in which they manage to locate family members who have not fallen prey to violence but have simply resettled in Mexico and abandoned or lost touch with families left behind. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

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 )

Embodied Economies is a thought-provoking Caribbean diasporic voyage that challenges us to rethink our expectations about Latinx culture under neoliberalism. In his accessible yet profoundly learned prose, Israel Reyes offers inspired queer, feminist, and social-science inflected readings of relevant literary and theatrical works in English and Spanish by prize-winning playwrights, novelists, and performers. This book is an eagerly awaited contribution to transnational, hemispheric studies of the Americas. (review by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, author of Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance)