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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

Pedagogy of teaching theater and migration

This section is devoted to pedagogy: here you can find works about using theatre practice to teach about performance and migration, about teaching the subject of migratory performance itself, language teaching to migrants, etc.

  • Dunn, J., et al. (2012). Combining Drama Pedagogy with Digital Technologies to Support the Language Learning Needs of Newly Arrived Refugee Children: A Classroom Case Study. Research in Drama Education, 17(4), 477–499. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2012.727622

This article discusses the use of digital technologies in an Australian drama classroom with a group of recently arrived, non-English-speaking refugee children. It explores the incorporation of digital technologies in a drama-based approach to support resilience and English-language development. Detailing its methodology, dramaturgy, and outcomes, the study reflects on language development, information provision, narrative development, and the creation of mood. It aims to create a learning context that is both enjoyable and valuable in terms of achieving key outcomes, while empowering children to become problem solvers by balancing distance and identification.

The article reports an exploratory study of how theatre plays were used in upper-secondary schools to generate pedagogically relevant platforms for addressing the current Middle East conflicts and their impact on European societies in the context of religious education and civics. The study is ethnographic, documenting theatre visits and classroom activities in relation to two plays about the Middle East situation. The results show that plays may open up new opportunities for addressing these issues, but that they may also be perceived as normative and generate opposition. An interesting observation is that a play may generate space for students to tell their refugee story in class, which personalized the experience of what it means to be a refugee. (abstract from the article)

Several years ago, the author developed a course called “Theater and Immigration” because she wanted to complicate her students’ notion of what “the border” was and is and where immigration happens or has happened in Latin America. The stage offers unique possibilities for the representation of migration. The goal of Gladhart’s class is to study plays that reflect different moments, experiences and motivations for migration. While the joint consideration of diverse experiences can produce distortions, there are also commonalities. (provided by OMNI)

This chapter delves into the potential for social entrepreneurship to empower asylum seekers in Slovenia through participatory methodologies, aiming to yield emancipatory outcomes. This initiative drew inspiration from the educational tenets promulgated by Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed and Augusto Boal’s theatre of the oppressed. During the workshops, two tutors on the pedagogy of oppressed and the theatre of the oppressed used several techniques, such as image theatre, forum theatre, newspaper theatre, legislative theatre, analytical theatre and breaking repression. This mixture of techniques was very well suited to work with asylum seekers and refugees, since the project also tried to bring attention to “how some people are racialized, governed and labelled as ‘migrants’ both individually and as part of a multiplicity”. (taken from the chapter)

This book addresses and demonstrates the importance of critical approaches to autoethnography, particularly the commitment that such approaches make to theorizing the personal and to creating work that embodies a social justice ethos. Arts-based and practice-led approaches to this work allow the explanatory power of critical theory to be linked with creative, aesthetically engaging, and personal examples of the ideas at work. By making use of personal stories, critical autoethnography also allows for commenting on, critiquing, and transforming damaging and unjust cultural beliefs and practices by questioning and problematizing the relationships of power that are bound up in these selves, cultures and practices. The essays in this volume provide readers with work that demonstrates how critical autoethnography offers researchers and scholars across multiple disciplines a method for creatively putting critical theory into action. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Krause, S., Proyer, M., & Kremsner, G. (2023). The Making of Teachers in the Age of Migration: Critical Perspectives on the Politics of Education for Refugees, Immigrants and Minorities. Bloomsbury Academic. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350244184

This book engages with the idea that as the world moves, and migration becomes a more common occurrence, the current system of education and teacher preparation must also shift. It examines how the idea of what makes a teacher is being reframed, while also exploring the perception of what a teacher is and its theoretical foundations. The book discusses how teachers can adapt to the growing diversity of their classrooms, how non-local teachers navigate their environments, and what hinders their ability to re-enter the workforce. It also addresses issues of preferred treatment among peers from various backgrounds.

  • Louis, R. (2005). Performing English, Performing Bodies: A Case for Critical Performative Language Pedagogy. Text and Performance Quarterly, 25(4), 334–353. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10462930500362528

This essay examines critical performative pedagogy within the context of a language course for immigrants and refugees. Using Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, it explores critical pedagogy through its application in an adult community ESL class. While investigating the intersection between pedagogy and performance, it highlights how this practice encourages students to take linguistic risks, deepening their knowledge of the language while also generating possibilities for communicative action in response to language obstacles. Through image and forum theatre, it cultivates additional tools such as ideological critique and embodied, ethnographic description.

The Routledge Companion to Drama in Education is a comprehensive reference guide to this unique performance discipline, focusing on its process-oriented theatrical techniques, engagement of a broad spectrum of learners, its historical roots as a field of inquiry and its transdisciplinary pedagogical practices. The book approaches drama in education (DE) from a wide range of perspectives, from leading scholars to teaching artists and school educators who specialise in DE teaching. It presents the central disciplinary conversations around key issues, including best practice in DE, aesthetics and artistry in teaching, the histories of DE, ideologies in drama and education, and concerns around access, inclusivity and justice. Including reflections, lesson plans, programme designs, case studies and provocations from scholars, educators and community arts workers, this is the most robust and comprehensive resource for those interested in DE’s past, present and future. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Spielraum: Teaching German through Theater is a sourcebook and guide for teaching German language and culture, as well as social, cross-cultural, and multi-ethnic tensions, through dramatic texts. This book presents a range of theoretical and practical resources for the growing number of teachers who wish to integrate drama and theater into their foreign-language curriculum. As such, it may be adopted as a flexible tool for teachers seeking ways to reinvigorate their language classrooms through drama pedagogy; to connect language study to the study of literature and culture; to inspire curricular rejuvenation; or to embark on full-scale theater productions. Focusing on specific dramatic works from the rich German-speaking tradition, each chapter introduces unique approaches to a play, theme, and genre, while also taking into account practical issues of performance. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Perry, J. A. (2025). “Who Gave You Permission to Have This Idea?”: Collective Creation and Emancipatory Pedagogy under Unfree Labour. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 1–18. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2025.2589172

This article reflects on the pedagogical tensions that emerged through a collective play-creation process with migrant farm workers employed under Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Grounded in Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy, and drawing on Jacques Rancière’s conception of emancipation, the article considers how participants engaged in a theatre-based project that explored their lived and labour experiences. The process facilitated a space for collective self-expression, while also exposing risks associated with the notion of becoming “visible” and its effect on workers’ ability to stand up for themselves and advocate for better working conditions. The article makes the case that workers’ choice to spend their leisure time creating art collectively can be viewed as a daring and potentially emancipatory endeavour, regardless of the social and research outcomes.

This article considers the ethical dimension of performative practice with refugees and migrants, positioning storytelling as a double-edged sword that can either elevate or stigmatise the storyteller. The core of the paper reports the analysis of nine interviews, conducted with professional artists, teachers and practitioners working in the context of forced migration. Data points to the interconnectedness between participants and facilitator, in terms of self-expression, creativity, vulnerability and agency. In this regard, the authors reframe vulnerability as an active, creative, liminal space essential to foster an ethical imagination. (from the annotation by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Poza-Garcia, M., et al. (2026). Decolonial Arts-Based Social Work and Education with Migrants in Spain: A Rights-Based Approach. Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 11(1), 174–186. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-025-00431-6

This article examines how arts-based, rights-oriented social work can foster voice, dignity, and inclusion with migrants in Spain. Drawing on decolonial theory and employing an a/r/tographic approach, it describes a collaborative program that educates participants about human rights and social work. Co-curated by the participants, the program uses visual and performative artifacts to rehumanize the refugee experience while building agency through collective cultural educational practices. The paper argues that arts-based practice, read through a decolonial lens, moves beyond using art as a mere method and functions as education within the arts that advances human rights in research, practice, and social work education.

This article uses two case studies of performance art presentations inspired by real stories and recounted through a community-based research process. Through Doris Rajan’s A Tender Path, a theatrical play, and Roshanak Jaberi’s No Woman’s Land, a multidisciplinary dance production, the paper details how dance and theatre were used to connect audiences with the oppression and violence that refugee and Indigenous women experience in their lives. Drawing on the participants’ own words, these works explore displacement and dispossession, offering insight into the research and creation process for both art pieces. The article concludes that a well-constructed performance art pedagogy helps develop stories that avoid essentialization, leaving room to present stories where many interpretations of truth can emerge. This critical discourse, when experienced through theatre and dance, can change participants’ understanding of social circumstances by offering alternative narratives and encouraging new ideas about how these relationships can be disrupted.

This paper presents data from a study examining the use of Theatre of the Oppressed as a critical pedagogy and research method for exploring notions of identity, belonging, and culture with francophone secondary students. It summarizes a series of workshops hosted for Black African–Canadian students of refugee backgrounds that identified linguistic background, citizenship status, and race as variables that put limits on the futures they are able to imagine for themselves. The paper explores identity and symbolism as means by which students challenge acceptable topics of discussion, and shows how their identities collide with their experience of education in Canada.

This book links the artistic and cultural turn in migration studies to the larger struggle for narrative and cultural change in European migration societies. It proposes theoretical and methodological approaches that highlight how ideas of change expressed in artistic and cultural practices spread and lead to wider cultural change. The book also looks at the slow processes of change in large cultural institutions that emerged at a time when culture was nationalised. It explains how individual and group activities can have an impact beyond their immediate surroundings. Finally, the book discusses how migration researchers have cooperated with arts and cultural producers and used artistic means to increase the effect of their research in the wider public. As such, the book provides a great resource for graduate students and researchers in the social sciences and the humanities who have an interest in migration studies and want to move beyond interpreting the world towards changing it. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Steinberg, S. R. (2020). On-the-Ground Literacies: Moderating with Media and Theatre to Embody Critical Pedagogy. International Journal of Roma Studies, 2(1), 28–40. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17583/ijrs.2020.5161

This paper is based on the work of Paulo Freire, Jesús Gomez and Joe Kincheloe. Written in an ethnographic style and grounded in the theoretical frameworks of Radical Love and Critical Pedagogy, it uses a bricolage approach to narrative work examples. In three separate sections, it discusses and explains the evolution of the author’s activist work: moving from humanitarian work with Syrian refugees in Budapest’s Keleti train station; to working with newcomer Canadians from Syria in order to encourage dialogue and education about critical media literacy; to creating theatre with recently expelled Turkish refugees in Canada. The article stresses the need to engage with the study of migration in a practical, as well as theoretical, way in order to enlighten scholarship in an authentic manner.

This article describes the impact of a theatre workshop project on newly arrived children in Greece. With the goal of helping children develop the skills necessary for their linguistic, educational, and social integration into Greek society, the project argues for the use of drama-based pedagogy in refugee children’s education. Detailing the various skill approaches taken by the researchers, it explains its methodology and outcomes, framed by anonymized testimonials from students about their experience. It also remarks on improvements in several categories including vocabulary, communication skills, socialization, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.