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: Visitors From Far Away to the State Machine

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2016

Produced by: Hong Kong Exile

Creative Team: Original Scenario by Hong Kong Exile: Milton Lim, Remy Siu, Natalie Tin Yin Ga

Synopsis: Visitors From Far Away to the State Machine is a multi-media theatre space opera with variable beginnings, middles, and endings. Two aliens travel millions of light years to Earth for their honeymoon. On their journey, they tease one another with sexy and profane stories from the past, present, and future. They arrive on planet Earth and their fantasy begins/continues/completes.

Source: https://www.hongkongexile.com/visitors
Title: We are Refugees (

Geography: Europe > Southern Europe > Malta

Year: 2018

Produced by:

Creative Team: Azzopardi, Mario Philip | Director and libretto – Opera

Synopsis: Aħna Refuġjati (“We are Refugees”) recounts the challenges faced by a Syrian family forced to flee civil war—crossing borders, confronting racism and the denial of basic rights, and enduring separation, hunger, loss, and life in refugee camps—while still holding onto brief moments of love and hope for a safer future.

Source: https://timesofmalta.com/article/refugee-themed-opera-to-premiere-on-friday.687843
Title: we the same

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2021

Produced by: A Ruby Slippers Theatre Premiere Production presented by The Cultch

Creative Team: Written by Sangeeta Wylie | Directed by Diane Brown | Dramaturges: Amy Strilchuk, Rachel Ditor

Synopsis: The work traces a Vietnamese refugee family’s escape by boat and its reverberations across generations through a contemporary mother–daughter relationship, using a hybrid form that blends storytelling, shadow play, live music, and visual media to stage fragmented memory and embodied history. The play is situated within the context of forced displacement and diasporic inheritance, the piece interrogates how refugee experiences are transmitted, translated, and partially obscured over time, raising political and ethical questions about visibility, intergenerational trauma, and the limits of representing lived histories on stage.

Source: https://www.rubyslippers.ca/we-the-same-pressrelease/
Title: What Became of Us

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2024

Produced by: Atlantic Theatre Company

Creative Team: Directed by: Jennifer Chang

Synopsis: What Became of Us is a musical theatre production about two siblings. One born in their home country and the other born in their new home across the world. The play asks the questions of how they maintain a connection with each other and with their homes. The play was performed with two different casts throughout the run time each delivering the message with a unique take. Each having their own runtime and then performing in succession back to back.

Source: https://atlantictheater.org/production/what-became-of-us/
Title: Wild Dogs Under My Skirt

Geography: Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > New Zealand

Year: 2019

Produced by: FCC and Silo Theatre; presented by Auckland Arts Festival

Creative Team: Written by Tusiata Avia; directed by Anapela Polataivao

Synopsis: Wild Dogs Under My Skirt uses Tusiata Avia’s poetry to craft an ensemble performance about Samoan womanhood in Aotearoa. The production considers colonial history as well as the way Pacific women’s bodies are racialised and portrayed onstage. Using English and Samoan creates creates shifts between intimacy and confrontation, as use of the ensemble shows the breadth and complexities of diasporic representation. Several sequences address the demand that cultural identity remain pure even though it has been altered by colonial power and life in New Zealand. The production considered post migration identity as politically contested and physically embodied, connecting contemporary racism to wide histories of imperial movement across the Pacific. The piece offers an account of heavily gendered diaspora, where belonging is asserted through violence rather than from a dominant national audience.

Source: Silo Theatre, production archive: https://silotheatre.co.nz/show/wild-dogs-under-my-skirt The Coconet, production feature: https://www.thecoconet.tv/moana-arts/coco-performance/wild-dogs-under-my-skirt-adaptation/
Title: Wildfire

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2024

Produced by:

Creative Team: David Paquet Translated by Leanna Brodie | Playwright: David Paquet Translated by Leanna Brodie
Director: Jovanni Sy

Synopsis: Synopsis：In Wildfire, three generations—Claudette, Claudia, Claudine, Callum, Carol, and Caroline—grapple with the legacy of deep-rooted family trauma and emotional isolation. From sisters confined to their homes and haunted by an abusive mother, to awkward lovers undone by fantasy and candy, to a woman unraveling in a TV-obsessed meltdown, each character’s quirky survival tactics collide with pain and absurdity. This darkly comic, surreal triptych reveals how inherited wounds burn slowly—and sometimes explode in unexpected, fiery ways.

Source: https://www.upstreamtheater.org/Wildfire-PAST-SHOW
Title: World Factory (世界工廠)

Geography: Asia > Eastern Asia > China

Year: 2014

Produced by: Grass Stage; Shenzhen presentation organised by OCAT

Creative Team: Conceived and directed by Zhao Chuan; collectively created by Grass Stage performers

Synopsis: Grass Stage’s World Factory examines the labour system underlying China’s transformation into a global manufacturing centre. The production focuses on workers whose movement from rural regions to industrial cities supplies factories with a flexible workforce. Taking a grassroots perspective to factories and workers, migration is embedded within the economic model of china. Inspired by Zhao Chuan’s 2009 trip to Manchester, England, a city known as the ‘World Factory’ , documentary materials and devised scenes are employed in the production to show how migrant workers are interchangeable. Consequently, the play’s creation sparked a series of workshops and seminars across various different cities. By touring the work within China, Grass Stage addressed audiences living inside the same economic situation it critiques.

Source: British Council China, OCAT production listing and background: https://www.britishcouncil.cn/en/programmes/arts/upcoming-arts-activities/worldfactory Videotage Media Art Collection, performance documentation: https://www.videotage.org.hk/vmac/video/world-factory
Title: Yakiniku Dragon (焼肉ドラゴン)

Geography: Asia > Eastern Asia > Japan

Year: 2025

Produced by: New National Theatre Tokyo and Seoul Arts Center

Creative Team: Written and directed by Chong Wishing; translation by Kawahara Kenju; design by Shima Jiro; music by Kume Daisaku

Synopsis: The 2025 revival of Yakiniku Dragon follows a Zainichi Korean family running a small yakiniku restaurant in Japan around the time of the 1970 Osaka Expo. Father Yong-gil has survived war and displacement, while his children confront discrimination within the country where they have grown up. Employment is restricted by the Korean ancestry inherited within familial structures which complicates citizenship and cultural belonging. The family’s neighbourhood is also threatened by redevelopment connected to the expansion of an airport, placing postwar Korean residents under another form of removal. Japanese and Korean performers share the production, while both languages remain part of its theatrical world. The production follows Kim Yong-gichi who fought in the Pacific War, his relationship with his daughters and their family restaurant.

Source: New National Theatre Tokyo, official 2025 production press dossier: https://www.nntt.jac.go.jp/release/press/NNTT_PressRelease_YakinikuDragon2025.pdf Seoul Arts Center, co-production background and 2025 production information: https://www.sac.or.kr/site/main/board/pressrelease/314208 South Korea
Title: Yamel Cucuy

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2026

Produced by: Latino Theatre Company (Los Angeles)

Creative Team: Director: Caroline Reck | Written by Gricelda Silva, Indigo Rael, and Caroline Reck; additional writing by Jesus I. Valles, Connor Hopkins

Synopsis: Yamel is a young adult contending with the violence of the U.S. and Mexico Border. She is being chased by immigration agents as well as ghosts from Mexican folklore. She goes on a journey in-between the borders of life and death while finding her own way. The folklore ghosts are represented by sophisticated puppets with an original score of indigenous percussion. This production looks at the past and identity through the world of Mexican folklore with the modern legal ghosts that haunt immigrants in America.

Source: https://www.latinotheaterco.org/yamelcucuy
Title: YELLOW RABBIT

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2018

Produced by: Silk Bath Collective

Creative Team: Jasmine Chen | Playwrights: Bessie Cheng and Aaron Jan and Gloria Mok
Director: Jasmine Chen

Synopsis: Synopsis: Yellow Rabbit is set in a dystopian future where two Chinese individuals, Man and Woman, undergo invasive tests at a facility called Rich-Man Hill, hoping for refuge. Overseen by the controlling Mother and conflicted Child, they confront surveillance, internalized racism, and survival ethics. As secrets surface and moral tensions rise, the play explores power, marginalization, and the human cost of safety. Combining projections, multilingual dialogue, and intense performances, Yellow Rabbit critiques authoritarianism and diaspora identity in a chilling, immersive experience.

Source: https://ttdb.ca/shows/yellow-rabbit/