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: Souvenir’s of Home

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2010

Produced by: Third Floor Office
Presented by The SummerWorks Performance Festival

Creative Team: Elyne Quan | Playwright: Elyne Quan Director: Ulla Laidlaw

Synopsis: In 1964, in the small town of Whitewood, Saskatchewan, the lives of a young Chinese girl, her overprotective mother and a concerned neighbour intersect with surprising and tragic consequences. Inspired by true events, this is a haunting story of isolation and longing in a small immigrant community. (irl.metafilter.com)

Source: https://irl.metafilter.com/53/Souvenirs-of-Home-a-play-at-Summerworks
Title: Spics n’ Span

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year:

Produced by: La Luna Productions/Firehall Arts Centre/Latino Theatre Group

Creative Team: Carmen Aguirre, with The Latino Theatre Group | Playwright:Carmen Aguirre, with The Latino Theatre Group

Synopsis:

Source:
Title: Step Afrika! The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2026

Produced by: Step Afrika! | The Joyce Theater

Creative Team: Directed and largely choreographed by Jakari Sherman

Synopsis: “Using its hallmark style of percussive dance-theater, Step Afrika!’s The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence tells the story of one of the largest movements of people in United States history when millions of African Americans moved from the rural South to the industrial North in the 1900s to escape Jim Crow, racial oppression, and lynchings. Inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s iconic 60-panel “The Migration Series” (1940-41), this signature work from the award-winning dance Company uses the images, color palette, and motifs in the painting series to tell this astonishing story through pulsating rhythms and visually stunning movement.”

Source: https://www.joyce.org/performances/step-afrika-1g2r | https://www.stepafrika.org/2024/05/the-washington-post-inspiration-migration/
Title: Suitcase/Adrenaline

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2020

Produced by: Theatre Mada Production | Theatre Passe Muraille

Creative Team: Playwright: Ahmad Meree | Director: Majdi Bou-Matar

Synopsis: This series of two one-act plays, written by Syrian artist and immigrant Ahmad Meree, examines the effects of war and exile. Performed in Arabic with English subtitles, both productions illustrate different aspects of Meree’s experience as a displaced person. Suitcase is a dark comedy that focuses on Razan and Samer; two characters stuck in a liminal space after fleeing their home due to an unknown tragic event. The play explores the notion of spaces, particularly those inhabited by refugees. Adrenaline tells the story of Jaber, a Syrian refugee preparing to celebrate his first New Year’s Eve in Canada. As he listens to the sound of fireworks, which echo the explosions he once heard, he wanders through his house and uncovers objects that evoke memories of the war he fled. Through these pieces, Meree seeks to foster greater empathy in audiences toward refugees.

Source: https://www.passemuraille.ca/19-20-season-shows/suitcase-adrenaline/ | https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/adrenaline-suitcase-ahmad-meree-1.5431441
Title: SUPPLICANTS OF SYRIA

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Year: 2026

Produced by: Border Crossings; streamed on YouTube as part of Refugee Week; connected to the 2026 Hoxton Hall stage production

Creative Team: Directed by Michael Walling; Associate Director Lucy Dunkerley; Producer in Turkey Ilke Sanlier; Video Artist Kıvanç Türkgeldi; Music by Dave Carey; Movement by Maria da Luz Ghoumrassi

Synopsis: Border Crossings’ SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA is a multilingual film adaptation of Aeschylus’ Suppliants, created as a companion to its 2026 Hoxton Hall stage production. The work retells the ancient story of women seeking sanctuary through the contemporary experiences of Syrian refugee women displaced by war. Developed through workshops in Adana, Turkey, the film brings together testimonies about life in Syria, ISIS violence and dangerous journeys to safety. These accounts are set alongside choral passages from Aeschylus, using documentary testimony as well as classical text and filmed performance to emphasise present-day forced migration. The production raises questions about how testimony is gathered and represented. This foregrounds women’s voices and asks audiences to consider their responsibilities as witnesses to displacement.

Source: Border Crossings SUPPLICANTS OF SYRIA film listing: https://www.bordercrossings.org.uk/whats-on/programme/supppliants-syria-film Beyond the Curtain, Review of SUPPLICANTS OF SYRIA, by Jess: https://www.beyondthecurtain.co.uk/2026/03/suppliants-of-syria-review.html#google_vignette Stage Lync, Press Release of SUPPLICANTS OF SYRIA: https://stagelync.com/news/suppliants-of-syria-london-premiere
Title: Suren (Traces)

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > Germany

Year: 2022

Produced by: Ruhrorter (Mülheim, Germany)

Creative Team: Max Brands (Audiowalk, Archive) | Adem Köstereli (Installation) | Ali Köstereli (Videos) | Julian Rauter (Installation) | Franziska Schneeberger (Audiowalk, Archive) | Wanja van Suntum (Archive, Audiowalk) | Alexander Weinstock (Archive, Production Management)

Synopsis: This production formed together as a theatre installation and audio walk tour for its audiences. The piece highlights the migrant experience in Germany as the Ruhrorter theatre company combines images and stories from multiple productions over their ten-year history. Theatre, film, sound and radioplay converge together to let spoken stories and archival images reexamine and resurrect old stories into the modern consciousness. This production remembers the past put shapes it into a production that looks ahead to the future. Max Brands – Audiowalk, Archive Adem Köstereli – Installation Ali Köstereli – Videos Julian Rauter – Installation Franziska Schneeberger – Audiowalk, Archive Wanja van Suntum – Archive, Audiowalk Alexander Weinstock – Archive, Production Management

Source: http://www.ruhrorter.com/projekte.html
Title: Syria: Trojan Women

Geography: Asia > Western Asia > Jordan

Year: 2013

Produced by: The Trojan Women Project

Creative Team: Omar Abusaada Adapted from Euripides | Director: Omar Abusaada Adapted from Euripides

Synopsis: Syria: The Trojan Women brings together 48 Syrian refugee women in Amman to reinterpret Euripides’ classic anti-war play. Led by Syrian director Omar Abu Saada and produced by Charlotte Eagar, the project fuses testimony, performance and empowerment, giving voice to women’s wartime experiences. It premiered in 2013 and toured internationally, including a North American debut at Georgetown.

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Title: Tanja

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Year: 2016

Produced by: John Tomlinson; Strawberry Blonde Curls Theatre Company; UK touring production

Creative Team: Written by Rosie MacPherson; directed by Hannah Butterfield; featuring Emily Ntshangase-Wood

Synopsis: Tanja is a performance about women’s immigration detention in the UK, created by Strawberry Blonde Curls Theatre Company and featuring former Yarl’s Wood detainee Emily Ntshangase-Wood. Combining spoken word, movement, puppetry and sign language with verbatim theatre Tanja explores what happens after arrival when a request for safety is entangled with institutional power. The piece examines asylum as an ongoing condition shaped by confinement and uncertainty. Projections displaying the names of women detained at Yarl’s Wood force the audience to confront the human consequences of immigration detention. Rather than treating detention as an abstract policy issue, Tanja places spectators close to the emotional and bodily effects of being detained while seeking protection. Politically, this piece is heightened by Ntshangase-Wood’s lived connection to the experience she narrates onstage.

Source: Sanctuary in the Arts description of Tanja: https://arts.cityofsanctuary.org/2016/08/01/tanja-an-impassoed-play-about-detention-in-the-kk Tanja Trailer: https://vimeo.com/176805247 British Theatre Guide Review of Tanja: https://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/tanja-the-studio-at-t-13478 Broadway World description of Tanja: https://www.broadwayworld.com/uk-regional/article/Strawberry-Blonde-Curls-TANJA-Coming-to-Camd en-Peoples-Theatre-20160923 SOUTHERN EUROPE SOUTHERN EUROPE Italy
Title: Terre Rouge

Geography: Africa > Western Africa > Senegal

Year: 2026

Produced by: Compagnie Entheos Ño Far, Éleuk Théâtre and Grand Théâtre National Doudou Ndiaye Coumba Rose

Creative Team: Written by Aristide Tarnagda; directed by Alioune Sané; performed by Céline Lombardi

Synopsis: Terre Rouge connects exile to the destruction of landscapes altered by resource extraction and aggressive development. The production considers how childhood memories emerge alongside environments that do not provide the same forms of livelihood or cultural continuity. Movement develops as the relationship between community and land is weakened gradually. The production also incorporates Céline Lombardi’s personal history of repeated movement between countries, giving the text a connection to family migration. Its collaboration between Senegalese and European artists reflects the transnational routes examined onstage.

Source: Le Quotidien, production and residency information: https://lequotidien.sn/theatre-compagnie-franco-senegalaise-entheos-no-far-terre-rouge-une-odyssee-sceni que-entre-memoire-exil-et-ecologie/ Middle Africa
Title: That Song Is Still There, the Body Dreams (那首歌還在，身體作夢)

Geography: Asia > Eastern Asia > Taiwan

Year: 2026

Produced by: TAI Body Theatre

Creative Team: Conceived and choreographed by Watan Tusi; created with the TAI Body Theatre ensemble

Synopsis: That Song Is Still There, the Body Dreams uses movement to connect contemporary labour migration with older histories of Indigenous movement within Taiwan. The production considers people who leave home because livelihoods are available elsewhere, allowing migrant work to be understood through embodied repetition rather than a conventional journey narrative. Songs inspired by each location carry the audience from one location to another, preserving relationships with places that workers cannot inhabit continuously. The outdoor staging in Taoyuan is significant because the area contains communities formed through industrial employment and internal movement. The production complicates a strict division between international migration and mobility within Taiwan, it asks how labour economies repeatedly reorganise where people are able to live while cultural practices continue to travel with them.

Source: Taoyuan Arts Facilities Management Center, official production listing: https://www.afmc.gov.tw/Activity_detail/b670c8d4cbf2400aaabac8cce401e38c?end=2026%2F10%2F05&sta rt=2026%2F04%2F04 Performing Arts Reviews, production review: https://pareviews.ncafroc.org.tw/comments/2ad72a45-3211-4e15-8d92-1af9f49f52d5 Japan