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

Archives: Productions

304 entries

Title: Harvest Justice: Twice the Speed of Lightning

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2025

Produced by: Mixed Company Theatre | Collaborative Network to End Exploitation

Creative Team: Playwright: Catherine Frid | Director: Simon Malbogat

Synopsis: Getting approved to work in Canada as a migrant farm worker seems like the opportunity of a lifetime for Diego, a new father from Mexico. However, this dream quickly becomes a nightmare upon arrival as he is forced into dangerous work, unsanitary and cramped living conditions, and is economically exploited. James, a long-time worker in the program from Jamaica, works hard and takes Diego under his wing as he tries to advocate for changes to make the farm and program a safer place for workers. As the injustices pile up, the play asks how migrant workers in Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program can be better protected, and invites audiences to discuss or roleplay possible solutions.

Source: https://mixedcompanytheatre.com/harvest-justice-for-migrant-workers/ | https://nativeearth.ca/shows/all-shows/harvest-justice-twice-the-speed-of-lightning | https://www.cnee.ca/harvest-justice/
Title: Hate Radio

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > Germany

Year: 2011

Produced by: International Institute of Political Murder with HAU Berlin and the Kigali Genocide Memorial

Creative Team: Conceived, written and directed by Milo Rau; research and dramaturgy by Jens Dietrich; design by Anton Lukas

Synopsis: Hate Radio reconstructs a broadcast by Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, the station that encouraged violence during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The studio is enclosed behind glass, while spectators listen through headphones as though receiving the original programme. Before and after the radio show there are statements from victims and perpetrators, whilst the performance itself is relaxed with music and casual conversation amongst shocking incitements to murder. This reduces the targeted people to an invading population. The production demonstrates how displacement begins in language before people flee physically. Neighbours are recategorised as outsiders whose removal appears necessary for national survival. Rwandan and European performers recreate the broadcast from testimony and legal records. This makes the reconstruction of the documentary evidence an ethically troubling matter as Hate Radio links propaganda to genocide and the refugee movements that followed.

Source: Berliner Festspiele, Theatertreffen production archive: https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/theatertreffen/programm/2012/10-inszenierungen/hate-radio Nachtkritik, review of the Berlin production: https://nachtkritik.de/nachtkritiken/deutschland/berlin-brandenburg/berlin/hau-berlin/hate-radio-milo-rau- und-sein-internationales-institut-fuer-politischen-mord-fuehren-eine-radio-hass-sendung-aus-ruanda-wied er-auf-
Title: Haven FM（2015）

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2015

Produced by: Hong Kong Exile, A Multi-media Dance Theatre, Alameda Theatre Company

Creative Team:

Synopsis: HEAVEN FM is a one-hour dance-theatre work devised by Hong Kong Exile. Set in a surreal radio-universe, five artists use low-tech tools to connect with ghostly transmissions—dancing with ancestral memory, loss, and absurdity. Inspired by Chinese ritual in a digitized world, the performance blends sound, movement, and visual elements in an exploration of grief, joy, and shifting spirituality. It is staged site-specifically in Vancouver Art Gallery’s Courtroom 302.

Source: Source：https://www.hongkongexile.com/heaven-fm
Title: Herkunft

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > Germany

Year: 2021

Produced by: Nationaltheater Mannheim

Creative Team: Adapted and directed by Johanna Wehner; design by Benjamin Schönecker; music by Kostia Rapoport and Vera Mohrs.

Synopsis: Herkunft reconstructs Saša Stanišić’s childhood in Višegrad and his arrival in Heidelberg after his family fled the Bosnian War. Four performers share the narrator’s role, which prevents one stable version of identity from emerging and dominating the production. The narrator’s grandmother gradually loses her memory, making the preservation of family history increasingly urgent. The production utilises audience interaction as memories of Bosnia are placed beside experiences of learning German and growing up in a Heidelberg housing estate. The production also asks what a person chooses to take when departure becomes unavoidable. Objects and memories offer continuity but cannot replicate or reproduce a place as it has been left. Migration becomes an act of storytelling through which the displaced person constructs a liveable relationship with several homes.

Source: Nationaltheater Mannheim, official production page and credits: https://www.nationaltheater-mannheim.de/spielplan/a-z/herkunft/ Die Deutsche Bühne, premiere review: https://www.die-deutsche-buehne.de/kritiken/starkes-erzaehltheater/
Title: Hilot Means Healer

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2019

Produced by: Cahoots Theatre Company and Nightwood Theatre

Creative Team: Written by: Jo Si Malaya Alcampo Direction: Jasmine Chen
Dramaturgy: Marjorie Chan

Synopsis: Synopsis：Hilot Means Healer is set in rural Manila during World War II and follows Manang Flor, a traditional healer, who shelters Alfredo, a wounded resistance fighter. Living with Flor is Alma, a pregnant orphan who distrusts the newcomer. As tensions rise, the trio confront personal and generational trauma rooted in war, colonialism, and Indigenous spirituality. Blending Philippine folklore with historical reality, the play explores healing, memory, and survival, illuminating the interconnectedness of land, identity, and ancestral wisdom in times of upheaval.

Source: Source：https://theatrecentre.org/event/hilot-means-healer/
Title: Holy Crab!

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2013

Produced by: 2013 Unfiltered Festival, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York

Creative Team: A play by Zhu Yi | Puppetry Designer and Choreographer: Lake Simons | Music Director: Yoonmi Lee

Synopsis: Holy Crab! is a dark comedy that intertwines the journey of a Chinese immigrant woman in the United States, whose reunion with her brother exposes hidden economic and emotional tensions, and whose romantic involvement with a border officer becomes increasingly precarious, with the parallel story of the Chinese mitten crab, labeled an invasive species in New York yet prized as a delicacy in China. Through a wildly theatrical structure that blends realism with allegory across time and space, the play explores migration as a condition of displacement, border control, and diasporic identity, using the crab as a metaphor for racialized “otherness.” By juxtaposing human and non-human migration histories, it interrogates how systems of classification, legality, and ecological protection mirror immigration regimes, raising critical questions about belonging, exclusion, and the ethics of who is allowed to enter, stay, or be valued within a nation.

Source: https://www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org/new-events-1/2016/3/21/holy-c
Title: Home Country

Geography: Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > Australia

Year: 2017

Produced by: Urban Theatre Projects, Blacktown Arts Centre and Sydney Festival

Creative Team: Written by Andrea James, Peter Polites and Gaele Sobott; directed by Rosie Dennis

Synopsis: Home Country was staged across a multi-level car park in Blacktown, an area shaped by Indigenous continuity and successive histories of migration. Audiences travelled between stories concerning Aboriginal sovereignty and migrant family life. The production makes the audience’s physical movement part of the work, it reveals Blacktown as a place whose cultural histories are rarely centred in national theatre. The character of Uncle Cheeky hosts the audience as we meet Ali and Zaphora Migration is examined through the attempt to establish belonging on land where settlement is intrinsically connected to dispossession. The production asks how newcomers can describe Australia as home while recognising the prior sovereignty of First Nations peoples. It also moves attention away from the national border and border crossings and reflects home and cultural belonging.

Source: Urban Theatre Projects, production archive: https://utp.org.au/event/home-country Sydney Festival, production archive: https://2017.sydneyfestival.org.au/country
Title: HUMAN

Geography: Europe > Southern Europe > Italy

Year: 2016

Produced by: A Mismaonda and Sardegna Teatro production In collaboration with Marche Teatrotheatre at Piccolo Teatro Strehler

Creative Team: Written by Marco Baliani and Lella Costa | Collaborating playwright Ilenia Carrone | Sets and costumes by Antonio Marras | Original music by Paolo Fresu | Directed by Marco Baliani | With Marco Baliani and Lella Costa and with David Marzi, Noemi Medas, Elisa Pistis, Luigi Pusceddunames

Synopsis: The initial inspiration is the Aeneid, which celebrates the birth of the Roman Empire from a population of refugees: Marco Baliani takes the myth as a starting point to examine the true sense of migration. Then the encounter with Lella Costa and the memory of another myth, even more striking in its symbolic significance: Hero and Leander, the two lovers who lived on opposing banks of the river Hellespont. The theme of migration and the desire to tell of the “reversed odyssey” brought life to HUMAN. The black line that crosses the word evokes the presence of humans and at the same time their negation. It is therefore an investigation, via theatrical forms, of what has been happening over the past few years in Europe, seen not only as a geographical entity, but also as a “Western” system of values and ideas: walls which are raised, fundamentalism which advances, terrorist attacks which stun the cities, refugees seeking refuge. This is no simple civil theatre, it is an unsettling, provocative and disturbing exploration of the decisive boundary which separates the humane from the inhumane in the form of an oratorio, in an attempt to set off a rite of participation on the true meaning of HUMANITY.

Source: https://www.piccoloteatro.org/en/2016-2017/human
Title: I Call Myself Princess

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2018

Produced by: Cahoots Theatre Company and Native Earth Performing Arts and Paper Canoe Projects

Creative Team: Jani Lauzon | Creators: John Millard and Waleed Abdulhamid Director: Marjorie Chan

Synopsis: I Call myself Princess tells the story of William, a gay Métis music student in 2018 who discovers the 1918 opera Shanewis, inspired by real-life Creek/Cherokee singer Tsianina Redfeather. As William delves into its music and history, Redfeather and her collaborators—composer Cadman and librettist Eberhart—come alive, transporting him into their world. Through this magical-realist framing, William confronts the complexities of cultural appropriation, artistic intent, and Indigenous erasure.He learns to see beyond anger, embracing a nuanced understanding of the past while reclaiming his own voice in the present.

Source: https://www.stage-door.com/Theatre/2018/Entries/2018/9/14_I_Call_myself_Princess.html (Review)
Title: I Have a Dream in Chinese

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2026

Produced by: Presented by Liquid on Stage as a Yu Theatre Toronto production; Ottawa Fringe Festival; La Nouvelle Scène Studio B, Ottawa

Creative Team: Written by Irene Fan Yi; directed by Daisy Mengru Jia; performed by Charlee Ning 宁唯而; stage managed by Ziqi 比卡 Liu; production support by Noel Pendawa

Synopsis: I Have a Dream in Chinese is a bilingual Mandarin-English solo performance following a Chinese immigrant, Ivy, also known as Song travelling from Hong Kong to Vancouver while negotiating two names, two languages and two homes. Centred on the fractured identities of Song and Ivy, the piece explores migration during and after COVID-19 through border crossing, workplace erasure, microaggressions, state surveillance and the grief of leaving a city behind. Its aesthetic combines poetic monologue, bureaucratic absurdity, projection and dreamlike sound. The production deftly moves between everyday Canadian situations and moments of interrogation and family contact. Belonging and cultural assimilation is unstable and shaky, rather than achieved immediately through arrival. By staging migration as an external journey, the show asks how a racialized migrant begins again when Canada still demands incessant proof of identity.

Source: Yu Theatre Toronto, official production listing: https://www.yutheatre.com/programming/touring-and-festivals/i-have-a-dream-in-chinese Ottawa Fringe Festival, show listing: https://ottawafringe.com/show/i-have-a-dream-in-chinese/ Showpass, Ottawa Fringe ticketing page: https://www.showpass.com/i-have-a-dream-in-chinese/ Ruby Slippers Theatre, Advance Theatre Festival development listing: https://www.rubyslippers.ca/advance-theatre-festival-2026/ Burnt Out Reviews, Ottawa Fringe 2026 Opening Weekend review: https://burntoutreviews.com/2026/06/22/ottawa-fringe-2026-opening-weekend/ US