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: Migraaaants

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2024

Produced by: Theatre Passe Muraille

Creative Team: Director: Siavash Shabanpour | Dramaturgy: Payam Saeedi

Synopsis: This theatrical anthology of stories follows many migrants as they sail towards a new life; One of the stories follows a Balkan couple as they have dinner and discuss the prospects of their upcoming new life. The next follows the president and his speech writer as they discuss how to address the difference of “migrants” and “immigrants”. Finally, the story focuses on a little boy, Elihu, whose been taken advantage of by an unnamed man who is trying to steal his organs. The story looks at the different ways in which migration takes place.

Source: https://www.intermissionmagazine.ca/reviews/migraaaants-ttfu/ | https://ttdb.ca/shows/migraaaants/
Title: Mirad, un garçon de Bosnie (Mirad, a boy from Bosnia)

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > France

Year: 2018

Produced by: L’Amin Théâtre | Co-Producers: Arcadi Île-de-France, Département de la Seine-et-Marne, Communauté de communes du Val Briard

Creative Team: Director: Christophe Laluque | Playwright: Ad de Bont (written in 2006)

Synopsis: Written by Ad de Bont who based his story on documentary material and reports from Amnesty International, Mirad, un garçon de Bosnie follows the story of a thirteen-year-old boy as he searches for his mother who disappeared during the Bosnian civil war. The play is narrated in turn by Mirad, his aunt Fazila, his uncle Djuka, and his mother Verica, whose memories and perspectives intertwine to reveal the violent history of Yugoslavia and more broadly, of wars. In this piece which reveals the viewpoint of the defeated, the survivor, the escapee and the refugee, de Bont and Laluque bring into focus the absurdity of extreme violence and the effects on its victims while conveying a message of humanity and hope. The piece specifically seeks to transform the way we perceive those whom conflict forces onto exile

Source: https://www.amin-theatre.fr/amin/pdf/mirad-livret-40p-complet-pl-web.pdf
Title: Miunikh-Damaskus: Stories of One City

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > Germany

Year: 2017

Produced by: Open Border Ensemble

Creative Team: Director: Jessica Glause, Dramaturgy: Raina Mleihi

Synopsis: The Open Border Ensemble created Miunikh-Damaskus as an attempt to bridge gaps between Germans and newly-arriving Syrian refugees by linking the two cities. In the play, the Syrian performers would tell stories of their daily lives in Arabic and then the German performers would translate them into German. By having the actors tell real stories during the rehearsal process, the play seeks to portray a life other than what is normally told in ‘asylum stories’.

Source: https://www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/en/programmes_projects/theatre_and_movement/detail/open_border_ensemble.html | https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7040090
Title: Mizushōbai (The Water Trade)

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2023

Produced by: Segal Centre for Performing Arts (Montreal)

Creative Team: Playwright/Creator: Julie Tamiko Manning | Director: Yvette Nolan | Cast: Yoshie Bancroft, Hanako Brierley, Brenda Kamino, Katelyn Morishita, Dawn Obokata

Synopsis: Mizushōbai (The Water Trade) is an intergenerational ensemble drama that traces the life of Kiyoko Tanaka-Goto, a Japanese “picture bride” who immigrates to British Columbia in the early 20th century and becomes an underground businesswoman, navigating exploitation, gendered expectations, and survival under racialized labour conditions. Through a non-linear, multi-voiced theatrical structure in which multiple performers embody different stages of Kiyoko’s life simultaneously—often contradicting and reframing her own memories—the play blends documentary research, oral history, and poetic staging to construct a fragmented life narrative. It situates migration within a context of diasporic labour, gendered precarity, and wartime displacement, particularly foregrounding Japanese Canadian experiences of exclusion, incarceration, and economic marginalization during World War II. By resisting reductive stereotypes of Asian women (e.g., submissive, hypersexualized, or exoticized figures), the work critically interrogates how race, gender, and migration are constructed and commodified, raising ethical questions about authorship, memory, and who gets to narrate marginalized histories within the Canadian national imaginary.

Source: https://www.segalcentre.org/en/archive/mizushobai
Title: Moria

Geography: Europe > Southern Europe > Spain

Year: 2021

Produced by: Unahoramenos Producciones

Creative Team: Directed and designed by Mario Vega; text by Ruth Sánchez, Marta Viera, Mario Vega, Luis O’Malley, Nicolás Castellano and Valentín Rodríguez; documentary photography by Anna Surinyach

Synopsis: Moria is based on real testimonies recorded at the Moira camp by Nicolás Castellano. The immersive production follows two migrants who recount the experiences of women from Afghanistan and Iraq who reached Greece with their families in search of refuge. Their testimony is surrounded by 360-degree video recorded in the camp before it was destroyed by fire. The immersive form places spectators in a large tent featuring 360 audiovisual content. The limited space and prolonged waiting imposed on camp residents. The women describe sea crossings and the uncertainty of asylum procedures on European Soil as even more strain is placed on familial relationships in confinement.

Source: Unahoramenos Producciones, official production page: https://unahoramenos.es/produccion/moria/ Teatro Gayarre, production dossier: https://teatrogayarre.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Dossier-Moria.pdf
Title: Mother Singer (媽媽歌星)

Geography: Asia > Eastern Asia > Taiwan

Year: 2025

Produced by: Yang Ensemble

Creative Team: Written by Wei Yu-chia; new production developed by Yang Ensemble; performed by a four-person ensemble in Taiwanese with Japanese and Mandarin

Synopsis: Mama Singer reconstructs the lives of Taiwanese women working in Tokyo’s Kabukichō during the 1980s and 1990s. Wei Yu-chia developed the work after field research in the district, where Taiwanese-speaking migrant communities had created communities and networks. The production foregrounded Taiwanese rather than Mandarin, making language part of the migration history represented onstage. Women working abroad navigate motherhood and the pressure to maintain appearances for relatives at home. Through the use of multi-rolling, experiences unfold allowing adult memories to be refracted through children’s perspectives. The production recovers an overlooked history of Taiwanese labour migration to Japan and demonstrates that East Asian migration has long operated through routes that do not involve the West.

Source: PAR Performing Arts Magazine, feature on the 2025 production: https://par.npac-ntch.org/tw/article/doc/HDU3ZWU8XC AQ News, production background and language information: https://www.aq-news.com/post/20251217001
Title: Mothers – A Song for Wartime

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > France

Year: 2024

Produced by: Chorus of Women Foundation; co-produced and internationally presented with Maxim Gorki Theater and European festival partners

Creative Team: Conceived and directed by Marta Górnicka; libretto by Górnicka and the Chorus of Women; composition by Górnicka and Wojciech Frycz.

Synopsis: Mothers – A Song for Wartime assembles women from Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, including people displaced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The performers use Ukrainian ritual songs alongside statements about war and escape. Through traditional singing, the production examines how mothers are expected to protect children when military violence has made protection impossible. By bringing displaced women onto a major European festival stage, Mothers places lived testimony inside an established theatrical institution without disguising the differences between its participants. The chorus creates solidarity while allowing individual histories to remain distinct.

Source: Festival d’Avignon, French production listing: https://festival-avignon.com/en/edition-2024/programme/mothers-348549 Maxim Gorki Theater, production page and creative background: https://www.gorki.de/en/mothers-a-song-for-wartime
Title: My Little Tomato by Rick Tae

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2023

Produced by: Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre

Creative Team: Rick Tae | Produced by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre
Playwright: Rick Tae Director:Cameron Mackenzie

Synopsis: In My Little Tomato, Keaton Chu, a Chinese-Canadian kindergarten teacher, inherits his late parents’ produce farm and pours his grief and hopes into growing vegetables. When Joe McKinley, a Japanese-Irish-Canadian wholesaler, arrives to collect produce, a complicated romance unfolds. Both men wrestle with identity, trauma, and intimacy shaped by race, queerness, and past wounds. Guided by Keaton’s surreal inner voice—a drag queen tomato—this rom-com blends absurdist comedy with poignant reflections on love, shame, and belonging. Through vegetables, drag, and dance, My Little Tomato explores how queer Asian men navigate emotional vulnerability and find connection in a fragmented world.

Source: https://www.drama.yale.edu/training/dramaturgy-and-dramatic-criticism/application-requirements/
Title: Nabanna

Geography: Asia > Southern Asia > India

Year: 1944

Produced by: Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), Bengal

Creative Team: Written by Bijon Bhattacharya; jointly directed by Bijon Bhattacharya and Sombhu Mitra

Synopsis: Created during the Bengal famine, Nabanna follows rural families whose lives collapse when hunger makes remaining in their village impossible. The production considers characters who leave the countryside and travel towards Calcutta in the hope of finding food as famine becomes a drama of mass internal displacement. Arrival in the city does not resolve their crisis. They encounter poverty, exploitation and the loss of the social structures that had previously sustained them. IPTA toured the production through its Voice of Bengal campaign and used performances to raise money for famine relief. Migration operates both within the drama and around its original production, which carried stories of displaced rural Bengal into urban performance spaces elsewhere in India.

Source: Get Bengal, history of Bijon Bhattacharya and the original production: https://www.getbengal.com/details/bijon-bhattacharya-the-dreamer-who-believed-in-the-power-of-performing-arts-get bengal-story Indian Cine.ma, IPTA and Nabanna production history: https://indiancine.ma/EIC/info The Telegraph, background on Nabanna and its theatrical history: https://www.telegraphindia.com/life/cholo-nabanna-as-in-the-play-a-comeback-of-the-left-reflected-in-calcuttas-streets- today/cid/2048068
Title: Nadia

Geography: Europe > Southern Europe > Spain

Year: 2014

Produced by: La Conquesta del Pol Sud with Grec Festival de Barcelona and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

Creative Team: Created and performed by Nadia Ghulam with Carles Fernández Giua and Eugenio Szwarcer; directed by Carles Fernández Giua

Synopsis: Nadia recounts Nadia Ghulam’s childhood in Kabul and her later life in Barcelona. After being injured during the Afghan civil war, she assumed the identity of a deceased brother so that she could work under Taliban rule. After ten years of disguise, she moved to Barcelona, now living as a woman she is currently studying International cooperation. In this play Ghulam appears as herself and uses documentary material and real images to share her experience. The production gives her control over a story that might otherwise be framed only through victimhood. Barcelona becomes a place from which Afghanistan can be remembered and reconsidered, but it does not replace the country she left. Through performance, Ghulam is able to hold together identities that political circumstances have forced her to separate.

Source: Teatre Barcelona, production listing and history: https://www.teatrebarcelona.com/es/espectacle/nadia-2 Focus, production archive and creative information: https://cartellera.focus.cat/es/ex/nadia/