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: Tous des oiseaux

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > France

Year: 2017

Produced by: La Colline–Théâtre national

Creative Team: Written and directed by Wajdi Mouawad; dramaturgy by Charlotte Farcet; music by Eleni Karaindrou; design by Emmanuel Clolus.

Synopsis: Tous des oiseaux begins when Eitan, a German-Israeli geneticist, falls in love with Wahida, an American scholar of Arab heritage. Their relationship brings them into conflict with Eitan’s family, whose understanding of Jewish identity has been shaped by persecution and the history of Israel. A terrorist attack in Jerusalem leads to a revelation about Eitan’s father and the family history concealed from him. The production uses German, English, Hebrew and Arabic language showing the intersection between emotional and cultural identity and language. This multilingual form demonstrates how family members may inhabit different versions of the same political history. Migration appears through exile and the reconstruction of identity after war. The production also considers how children inherit national loyalties formed before their birth.

Source: La Colline–Théâtre national, official production page: https://www.colline.fr/spectacles/tous-des-oiseaux Festival TransAmériques, production listing and full credits: https://fta.ca/en/programme/tous-des-oiseaux
Title: Transgression/Cantosphere 越界/粵界

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2015

Produced by: Hong Kong Exile

Creative Team: A Multi-media Gallery Installation
Created by Hong Kong Exile (Natalie Tin Yin Gan, Remy Siu, and Milton Lim)
In collaboration with Centre A Gallery, Zoe Lam, and Howie Tsui

Synopsis: 越界/粵界 (transgression/cantosphere) is an immersive installation that urgently celebrates Cantonese language and culture amid political erasure and cultural loss. Drawing from Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and the gentrification of Vancouver’s Chinatown, the work transforms the tonal intricacies of Cantonese into multisensory experiences—audio, visual, and tactile. It invites speakers into an intimate space of linguistic play and cultural affirmation, asserting language as resistance and Chinatown as a vital sanctuary for Cantonese identity in a time of displacement and transformation.

Source: https://www.hongkongexile.com/-transgressioncantosphere
Title: Tribunal

Geography: Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > Australia

Year: 2016

Produced by: PYT Fairfield

Creative Team: Concept and lead artist Karen Therese; concept and legal collaboration by Joe Tan; created with refugee participants, artists and human-rights advocates

Synopsis: Tribunal transforms the theatre into an unofficial Australian truth and reconciliation hearing. Refugees appear alongside Indigenous elders and legal participants. This draws connections between colonial history and contemporary detention policy. The audience is positioned as a jury but is not offered assurance of a natural legal process, each performance is different. The production instead demonstrates how official procedures determine which accounts are treated as credible. Testimony is accompanied by participatory performance. Migration is represented as an institutional process that continues long after someone reaches Australian territory, labels such as ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum seeker’ become mechanisms through which complex lives are reduced to legal categories. By placing state language beside personal history, Tribunal asks whether theatre can produce forms of accountability that formal government processes have refused.

Source: PYT Fairfield, production archive: https://pyt.com.au/tribunal/ Arts House, production and creative-team information: https://www.artshouse.com.au/events/tribunal/
Title: Tugging at The Sea

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Year: 2024

Produced by: LegalAliens

Creative Team: Lara Parmiani Assistant | Director & Dramaturgy: Lara Parmiani Assistant Director: Angela Poulima

Synopsis: Tugging At The Sea is a surreal, funny and moving piece devised by refugees and migrants with LegalAliens Theatre. Blending fragmented narrative, physical theatre, songs and testimonies, it exposes the absurdity of anti-asylum propaganda. Paper boats fill the stage, celebrating shared humanity while questioning who the real threat truly is.

Source: https://legalalienstheatre.com/tugging-at-the-sea/
Title: Twice Blessed（2022）

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2022

Produced by: fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company

Creative Team: Kodie Rollan | Playwright：Marissa Orjalo Director:Kodie Rollan

Synopsis: Based on the St. Louis World Fair of 1904 where over 1,000 Filipinos were imported to America to be featured in a human zoo, we follow the story of two Filipina women and one Filipina girl lost to its history who remain buried 13,000 kilometres away from home. Twice blessed is an oddly absurdist, Beckett-like story. With a stage covered in soil and a god eating dog, these three characters find family and joy in one another among their simulacrum of home.

Source: https://www.fu-gen.org/works-in-development
Title: Two Birds, One Stone

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2024

Produced by: Teesri Duniya Theatre

Creative Team: Director: Murdoch Schon | Dramaturgy: Unlisted

Synopsis: Two Birds, One Stone follows a Palestinian newcomer and a Jewish Canadian as they explore their relationship with the conflict in the middle east as well as their experiences as Canadians. This politically engaged theatrical work seeks to teach about the idea of home, friendship, privilege, and freedom.

Source: https://teesriduniyatheatre.com/project/two-birds-one-stone/
Title: Uddan Haaray

Geography: Asia > Southern Asia > Pakistan

Year: 2023

Produced by: Ajoka Theatre; developed from testimonies collected and archived through the Citizens Archive of Pakistan/National History Museum

Creative Team: Written and directed by Shahid Nadeem

Synopsis: Uddan Haaray reconstructs Partition through memories preserved by people who experienced migration across the new India-Pakistan border. Shahid Nadeem developed the production from oral-history interviews, allowing recollected journeys, separation and encounters during 1947 to shape its theatrical narrative. At its centre are the experiences of Akhlaq and Haleema, while images of birds and flight create a parallel language for movement across territories. Ajoka explicitly identifies the pain of those who migrated during Partition as one of the production’s central concerns. Rather than treating 1947 as a distant political event, Uddan Haaray asks how border crossing survives within personal memory and how stories transmitted by migrants can complicate national narratives centred primarily on violence and antagonism.

Source: Ajoka Theatre, official production/background page: https://ajoka.org.pk/uddan-haaray-reveals-untold-stories-of-the-partition/ The News International, premiere announcement: https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1050464-ajoka-to-stage-uddan-haaray-on-18th Dawn, production coverage: https://www.dawn.com/news/1742369
Title: Un trozo invisible de este mundo

Geography: Europe > Southern Europe > Spain

Year: 2012

Produced by: Producciones Cristina Rota and Teatro Español

Creative Team: Written and performed by Juan Diego Botto with Astrid Jones; directed by Sergio Peris-Mencheta

Synopsis: Un trozo invisible de este mundo consists of five connected pieces addressing immigration and political exile. A migrant telephones the wife he left behind, while another speaker confronts the assumptions imposed on people arriving from sub-Saharan Africa. Other sections draw upon the history of Argentina’s dictatorship and the exile experienced by Botto’s own family. The production moves between narratives considering the nuanced experiences and forms of displacement. Its title refers to people who remain socially invisible despite living within European cities. Administrative language reduces them to legal status, while the intimate monologues restore specific relationships and memories. The piece also examines how exile enters the lives of children who inherit a parent’s missing homeland.

Source: Teatro Español, official production page: https://www.teatroespanol.es/espectaculo/un-trozo-invisible-de-este-mundo Teatro Español, production dossier: https://www.teatroespanol.es/sites/default/files/import/descargas/dossier_un_trozo_invisible_de_este_mu ndo.doc%5B1%5D.pdf
Title: Unto These Hills

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 1950

Produced by: Cherokee Historical Association

Creative Team: Playwrights: Kermit Hunter (1950); Hanay Geiogamah (2006); Pat Allee and Ben Hurst (2007); Linda West (2008); revised version restored in 2015

Synopsis: The play opens with the arrival of the Spanish Conquistador, Hernando DeSoto in 1540. The appearance of DeSoto and his army establishes an ominous portent of what will befall the Cherokee Nation during the next three-hundred years. Early on, the famous Cherokee leader, Yonaguska, deliberates the fate of all Native peoples, and yet charts a peaceful course with his white neighbors and the American government. He even joins forces with Andrew Jackson at the famous Battle of Horseshoe Bend where another famous Cherokee leader, Junaluska saves Jackson’s life. Despite this, Jackson will later develop policies as President that usurp previous promises of Cherokee sovereignty and deliberately charts a course for the removal of the Cherokee from their traditional homelands. The discovery of gold in Cherokee Country in 1835 sets the stage for tribal lands to be overrun by the whites, who illegally occupy lands, build settlements and town, and generally disregard the cultural practices and freedoms of the Native population. Also during this time, unscrupulous land agents descend upon area, carrying out the Manifest Destiny ideology, as well as creating deep divisions among the Cherokee people. It is at this point where the heartbreaking story of Tsali and his family begins to unfold. His unrelenting mistrust of the United States Government, along with his intense love of his people and their traditional ways, gives rise to an inevitable – and ultimately deadly – clash between him and the over-powering forces of the United States Army. Tsali’s resistance to removal leads to a sacrifice made so that a small group of Cherokees will be able to remain in their homeland. However, the infamous Trail of Tears begins despite this small victory. Despite the tragedies endured by the Cherokee people, our culture lives on today. Today we are proud to be members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and tell our story for generations to come.

Source: https://cherokeehistorical.org/attractions/unto-these-hills/ | https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/unto-these-hills-cherokee-historical-drama
Title: Vaderlandloos

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > Belgium

Year: 2021

Produced by: ARSENAAL/LAZARUS; co-produced by Perpodium and KVS

Creative Team: Created by Junior Mthombeni, Fikry El Azzouzi and Cesar Janssens; directed and performed by Junior Mthombeni; music by Cesar Janssens.

Synopsis: Vaderlandloos begins with Junior Mthombeni’s childhood identity document, which described him as stateless rather than Belgian or South African. He uses live music and family history to reconstruct the relationship between his Belgian mother and his South African father, an activist connected to the struggle against apartheid. Mthombeni examines how racial difference shaped his upbringing in Belgium while South Africa remained present through stories and political memory. Ideas of ‘Statelessness’ as an identifier are considered when the production imagines belonging as being created through artistic practice and community. The production uniquely utilises personal testimony and vulnerably interrogates how state categories permeate family life and determine who is recognised as a citizen.

Source: KVS, official production archive and performance history: https://www.kvs.be/fr/Evenement/vaderlandloos-1 Theater Arsenaal, production page with interviews and reviews: https://www.theaterarsenaal.be/nl/agenda/vaderlandloos