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: Lampedusa

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Year: 2015

Produced by: Soho Theatre; later Canadian premiere by Pi Theatre; Cornerstone Productions.

Creative Team: Written by Anders Lustgarten

Synopsis: Anders Lustgarten’s Lampedusa connects the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa with austerity-era Britain through two characters affected by unequal global systems. One story follows Stefano and Salvo, Stefano is a fisherman who retrieves the bodies of migrants who have drowned while attempting to reach Europe. The other follows Denise, a payday loan collector in Leeds, whose own economic vulnerability complicates ideas of cultural identity and national belonging. The production emphasises the extremities of European border violence, Mediterranean crossings and migrant deaths. The production links sea crossings to troubles of racism and poverty and austerity. It refuses to isolate the refugee crisis from wider political decisions.

Source: Pi Theatre event listing of Lampedusa: https://www.pitheatre.com/shows/lampedusa Aleks Slerz review of Lampedusa: https://www.sierz.co.uk/reviews/lampedusa-soho-theatre/ Audio play of Lampedusa commissioned for the Guardian by Soho Theatre: https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2015/jun/11/podcast-lampedusa-audio-play-migration
Title: Las Rutas de Julia de Burgos

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2014

Produced by: LegalAliens

Creative Team: Oscar Montero | Playwright: Oscar Montero Director: Marco Antonio Rodríguez

Synopsis: We celebrate the Centennial of Julia de Burgos (1914-1953) with the one-act play Las rutas de Julia de Burgos. The play presents the genius, the personal struggles and the humanity of the acclaimed Puerto Rican Playwright Julia de Burgos, focusing on powerful emotions—her passion for words, her love for Dominican leader Juan Isidro Jimenes Grullón and her faith in human solidarity and justice.

Source: Source：https://www.iatitheater.org/shows/detail/las-rutas-de-julia-de-burgos
Title: L’abisso

Geography: Europe > Southern Europe > Italy

Year: 2018

Produced by: Teatro di Roma–Teatro Nazionale, Teatro Biondo Palermo and Accademia Perduta/Romagna Teatri

Creative Team: Written and performed by Davide Enia; live music by Giulio Barocchieri

Synopsis: L’abisso developed from Davide Enia’s repeated visits to Lampedusa, where he interviewed residents and people involved in sea rescue. Through interviews and meetings concerned with the recovery of bodies after shipwrecks near Lampedusa, the production avoids reenacting migrant suffering directly. Instead the production uses music of ancient Sicilian fisherman, a cacophony of different languages and various theatrical styles to communicate the devastating accounts of shipwrecks. Lampedusa is an inhabited island whose residents have been required to respond to a European crisis concentrated at their shores. The “abyss” refers to the physical depth of the sea while also identifying the moral distance through which deaths at the border become normalised.

Source: Teatro di Roma, original production information: https://www.teatrodiroma.net/comunicazione/comunicati-stampa/labisso-2/ Piccolo Teatro di Milano, production listing and background: https://www.piccoloteatro.org/en/2021-2022/l-abisso Piuculture, interview with Davide Enia about the Lampedusa research: https://www.piuculture.it/2018/12/davide-enia-a-lampedusa-ho-scoperto-la-frontiera-del-mio-linguaggio/
Title: Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées)

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > France

Year: 2003

Produced by: Théâtre du Soleil; co-produced with Ruhrtriennale

Creative Team: Collective creation by Théâtre du Soleil; directed by Ariane Mnouchkine; music by Jean-Jacques Lemêtre; design by Guy-Claude François and Ariane Mnouchkine.

Synopsis: Ariane Mnouchkine’s Le Dernier Caravansérail draws on interviews conducted with refugees living in camps or temporary settlements across several continents. Following the structure of Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’, the play is performed in two parts, Part I, ‘Le Fleuve Cruel’ (The Cruel River) and Part II ‘Origines et Destins’ (Origins and Destinies) which demonstrates the need for departures. The production focuses on a range of fugitives who journey across Asia, Afganistan, Iran, Indonesia and Europe. Mobile platforms carry the performers across a large stage filled with water and temporary structures. Stable ground is rarely found by the performers and is continually withdrawn. The title presents the refugee camp as a modern caravanserai, but one without the protection historically associated with shelter along a journey. The production foregrounds the individual lives obscured by administrative terms such as refugee or illegal migrant and questions the spectator’s safe position in viewing these narratives of migration.

Source: Théâtre du Soleil, official production archive: https://www.theatre-du-soleil.fr/en/our-theatre/shows/le-dernier-caravanserail-2003-177 Festival d’Avignon, production listing: https://festival-avignon.com/en/edition-2003/programme/le-dernier-caravanserail-odyssees-the-last-carav anserai-odysees-28598
Title: Les deux réfugiés (The Two Refugees)

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > France

Year: 2017

Produced by: Les frères Malas

Creative Team: Director/Playwright: Mohamad Malas and Ahmad Malas (Syria/ France)

Synopsis: With their play Les deux réfugiés, twin brothers Mohamad and Ahmad Malas, who fled the war in Syria after producing controversial and highly political theatre, recount the hardships of their exile in France. Originally written in Arabic and inspired by the text Les Émigrés (1996) by Slawomir Mrozek, the performance is presented in French by the Malas brothers, who, until four years ago, could not speak the language. Mohamad plays a clever elderly man, while Ahmad takes on the role of a young, energetic man with a head injury. Both characters are migrants of no specific nationality who, together, discuss the challenges of being seen as “only refugees”. Through humor and self-deprecation, the Malas brothers seek to transform perceptions of Syrians and, more broadly, of refugees as a whole.

Source: https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/1869/les-deux-refugies–quand-le-theatre-donne-a-voir-lexi | https://youtu.be/1xsq7oTRYbA
Title: Les Fugueuses

Geography: Africa > Northern Africa > Tunisia

Year: 2026

Produced by: Fabula Production in co-production with the Tunisian National Theatre

Creative Team: Written, directed and designed by Wafa Taboubi; music by Hani Ben El Hamadi

Synopsis: Les Fugueuses places six strangers in a station-like space where they wait for an event that never arrives. Each character has lost confidence in the life available to them, yet movement towards the unknown offers no assured solution. The single setting builds tension and makes waiting a form of emotional displacement in itself. Their eventual departure from the station repositions the small movement of leaving into displacement. People are already separated from ordinary life before they cross a territorial border. Movement across the stage communicates their effort to recover agency from prolonged uncertainty. The production considers departure as both physical flight and an internal rupture with a former identity. It asks what remains of belonging when return is no longer possible and another home has not been found yet.

Source: L’Économiste Maghrébin, production information: https://www.leconomistemaghrebin.com/2026/07/18/les-fugueuses-une-traversee-theatrale-signee-wafa-ta boubi/
Title: Les vulnérables

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2026

Produced by: Singulier Pluriel

Creative Team: Director: Ximena Ferrer (Argentina) | Playwright: Julie Vincent (Canada)

Synopsis: Les vulnérables is a French-Canadian multilingual play that draws upon Grotowski’s “poor theatre” aesthetic to explore themes of personal memory and collective amnesia. Vincent’s piece follows Emilio, a young Argentinian theatre artist and immigrant, as he embarks on a journey to rebuild his mother’s past. His mother, Cecilia, who is currently living in a psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires, has suddenly lost her childhood memories and believes they are contained within an old accordion that was left in Montreal. She urges her son to find it, and Emilio travels from Argentina to Canada in an attempt to piece back together his mother’s life. Through his epic journey, which incorporates elements of circus, puppetry, crime cinema, cabaret, and poetry, the young man comes to uncover his own origins and seeks to shape his own identity within a world marked by political violence, war and exile.

Source: https://www.denise-pelletier.qc.ca/pieces/les-vulnerables/
Title: Letters from Cuba

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2000

Produced by: Signature Theatre Company

Creative Team: Written by Maria Irene Fornes | Producer: Signature Theatre Company | Artistic Director: James Houghton | Managing Director: Bruce E. Whitacre | Director: Maria Irene Fornes | Set Designer: Donald Eastman | Costume Designer: Teresa Snider-Stein | Lighting Designer: Matthew Fry | Sound Designer: Kurt B. Kellenberger

Synopsis: The play and book are based on the letters that Maria Irene Fornes received in her New York city apartment for three decades, from her brother, who was still living in Havana, Cuba. The set has Maria’s apartment on the stage and on the roof of her apartment, Luis’s place in Cuba is represented. Maria lives with her roommate’s, Joseph, Marc, and Fran, while Maria’s brother still lives in Cuba, but he cannot leave the country for a new life. He remains in Havana with his wife and son, under the communist regime and it is hard for the family to get away. The play centers on the familial connection that can still be maintained, even through trying times, with your loved ones in the distant country.

Source: https://stageagent.com/shows/play/23521/letters-from-cuba | https://ctda.library.miami.edu/media/publications/LETTERS_FROM_CUBA.pdf | https://variety.com/2000/film/reviews/letters-from-cuba-1200461377/
Title: Letters from Home

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2018

Produced by: Independent Shakespeare Company

Creative Team: Written and performed by Kalean Ung, directed by Marina McClure

Synopsis: Letters from Home is a multimedia solo show about Kalean Ung’s family’s journey to America as Cambodian refugees, based on letters that Ung found in one of her father’s drawers. The letters were from family and friends during the Khmer Rouge’s genocide of Cambodian citizens. Ung uses music written by her father, an award-winning composer, and projection design to create a layered performance about her own life as a daughter of refugees in America, and her complex relationship with her parents’ home.

Source: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/547e1be4e4b0142cf2a4f875/t/5c759d0771c10b60aef64592/1551211784042/Letters+From+Home_World+Premiere2018.pdf | https://www.thenewwild.org/letters | https://stageraw.com/letters-from-home/
Title: Lichter dan ik

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > Netherlands

Year: 2021

Produced by: Kobra Theaterproducties

Creative Team: Adapted by Esther Scheldwacht; directed by Olivier Diepenhorst; performed by Esther Scheldwacht, Kees Hulst and an ensemble.

Synopsis: Lichter dan ik follows Piranti, a Javanese woman living under Dutch colonial rule in the nineteenth century. Renamed Isah by a Dutch soldier, she becomes his njai, a domestic worker and concubine whose position carries no legal security. The production centres the Indonesian woman who gives up her maternal role to offer a better future with her daughter. Her daughter’s lighter skin tone may provide access to greater social status, but only if the child is separated from her mother. Although the principal action occurs before migration to the Netherlands, its structure addresses the family histories later carried by Indisch communities. Piranti tells her story towards the daughter taken from her, conveying a struggle many Indonesian women faced during colonial rule.

Source: Kobra Theaterproducties, official production page and press material: https://www.kobratheater.nl/lichter-dan-ik/ Theaterkrant, production review hosted by Isala Theater: https://www.isalatheater.nl/cms_files/File/Lichter%20dan%20ik%20-%20Theaterkrant.pdf