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: Black Brass

Geography: Oceania > Australia and New Zealand > Australia

Year: 2021

Produced by: Performing Lines WA; co-commissioned and presented by Perth Festival

Creative Team: Written, created and performed by Mararo Wangai; directed and co-created by Matt Edgerton; music composed and performed by Mahamudo Selimane

Synopsis: Black Brass follows Sleeper, an African migrant working as a cleaner in an Australian music studio. During a late-night shift, he encounters a stranger who communicates through music and appears connected to Sleeper’s past.. The production utilises flashback narrative to reveal experiences of migration, while the music draws on several different African languages. The production was informed by interviews with African communities living in Perth. It resists the expectation that migrant stories must culminate in conspicuous triumph. It instead concentrates on private forms of endurance and how we may connect to our past. Cleaning is significant as whilst Sleeper is physically present inside Australian institutions, he remains socially overlooked as a migrant and working class individual. The encounter between Sleeper and the stranger allows the production to consider how migrant workers carry memories into jobs that render them almost invisible. The production also asks what recognition might mean beyond legal residence and employment, as well as the social effects of moving.

Source: Performing Lines WA, production information page: https://performinglines.org.au/projects/black-brass/ Belvoir, Sydney production information page: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/black-brass/
Title: Blind Dates

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2025

Produced by: Theatre Passe Muraille

Creative Team: Vivian Chong | Playwright: Vivian Chong Director: Marjorie Chan

Synopsis: Synopsis：In Blind Dates, Vivian Chong recounts her real-life experiences navigating the world of dating after losing her sight. Through a series of humorous, painful, and revealing stories, she explores how her blindness shapes others’ perceptions and how she responds to fetishization, rejection, and inaccessibility—especially in online dating. Set in a tactile, sensory-rich environment, the solo show unfolds as Chong shares anecdotes, plays her original music, and reflects on love, independence, and identity, tracing a heartfelt journey through the complicated terrain of dating while blind.

Source: Source : https://aviewfromthebox.net/2025/02/28/theatre-passe-murailles-blind-dates/
Title: Blood Wedding

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2023

Produced by:

Creative Team: Federico García Lorca | Playwright:Federico García Lorca Director: Carmen Aguirre

Synopsis: Blood Wedding, presented by Studio 58 and Directed by Carmen Aguirre, reimagines Federico García Lorca’s poetic tragedy within an Andalusian bar. Blending flamenco rhythms, folk traditions, and a sleek ensemble aesthetic, the story follows a young bride torn between duty and desire as her past with the married Leonardo ignites a tragic chain of events. With haunting music, stylized movement, and surreal visuals, this production honors Lorca’s exploration of passion, repression, and the cyclical violence of honour-bound societies.

Source: https://www.createastir.ca/articles/studio-58-blood-wedding-review
Title: Blue Box

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2012

Produced by:

Creative Team: Brian Quirt | Written and performed by Carmen Aguirre Director: Brian Quirt

Synopsis: Blue Box interweaves two compelling narratives from Carmen Aguirre’s life: her dangerous past as a teenage resistance fighter against the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and her obsessive romantic entanglement in Canada with an emotionally unavailable TV star she calls “Vision Man.” Performed solo by Aguirre, the play moves between political revolution and erotic desire, exposing how both stories are bound by longing, risk, and the search for unconditional love. Through humor and raw vulnerability, Aguirre draws the audience into her world.

Source:
Title: Boat People

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > France

Year: 2025

Produced by: Lumière d’août

Creative Team: Director/Playwright: Marine Bachelot Nguyen (French-Vietnamese)

Synopsis: Boat People is a piece that blends documentary and traditional fiction theatre to tell the story of a French family who hosts a family of Southeast Asian refugees in their rural home. Based on the extensive research Nguyen conducted on these ‘Boat People’ – title that was given to them by the media – the play evokes the perilous sea crossings of those who fled the authoritarian regimes of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos after 1975. Throughout the performance, the show presents excerpts of documentaries, news broadcasts, images and testimonies from both hosts and ‘guests’, as it explores the emergence of the mediatization of humanitarianism in Europe in the late twentieth century. Through a mixture of intimate and political moments, the play aims to give voice to the 130 000 individuals who fled their native lands, as well as honor the surge of solidarity that was put into place at that time.

Source: https://www.lumieredaout.net/spectacles/spectacles-de-plateau/11-spectacles/537-boat-people
Title: Bor

Geography: Africa > Eastern Africa > Kenya

Year: 2000

Produced by: Amani Peoples Theatre with UNHCR and Caritas Italiana

Creative Team: Devised by Sudanese refugee youth and members of the local Turkana community with Amani Peoples Theatre facilitators

Synopsis: Bor was created during a peacebuilding programme involving Sudanese refugees and Turkana youth living around Kakuma Refugee Camp. The production’s central character Rot has lived within a community since childhood but is excluded from an initiation ritual because she is considered foreign. Younger participants challenge the elders and argue that residence should create a right to belong. The conflict reflects tensions between refugees and the host population, whose members felt that international agencies supported camp residents while overlooking local poverty. Audience members were invited to question the characters and propose alternatives.

Source: Beyond Intractability, production and Kakuma project study: https://www.beyondintractability.org/casestudy/amollo-power
Title: Borderline

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Year:

Produced by: PSYCHEdelight; performed at The Cockpit and toured internationally.

Creative Team: Directed by Sophie NL Besse; devised by PSYCHEdelight with refugee and European performers

Synopsis: Borderline is a devised production created by PSYCHEdelight with refugee and European performers from countries including Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine and Sudan. Set around the Calais Jungle, the production is highly comedic. Utilising clowning, satire, ensemble work and physical theatre it exposes the absurdity and regulation of border bureaucracy and European border control. Rather than presenting refugees only through suffering, the piece challenges the refugee ‘victim narrative’ and uses comedy to subvert and resist purely dehumanising images of crisis. The camp appears as a temporary home shaped by humour, joint circumstances and political abandonment. This shows how joy, friendship and performance are important within precarious conditions. The proaction challenges the performers to help them shape their own representation rather than being spoken for by outsiders.

Source: PSYCHEdelight, Production listing for Borderline: https://www.psychedelight.org/borderline Refugee History, Blog Post for Borderline: https://refugeehistory.org/blog/2017/12/13/being-human-2017-borderline-review-and-qa-transcript The Guardian, Review of Borderline: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/21/borderline-the-play-finding-the-funny-side-of-the-calais -migrant-camp PSYCHEdelight Film Description for Borderline: https://www.psychedelight.org/borderlinefilm Refugee Week, Interview with Sophie Besse on Borderline: https://refugeeweek.org/its-heartbreaking-to-feel-like-you-only-inspire-pity-an-interview-with-sophie-bes se-director-of-borderline-comedy-about-calais/
Title: Braveheart

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > France

Year: 2025

Produced by: Association Root’s Arts, Aurélien Tracol | Co-Producers: La Scène Nationale du Quartz

Creative Team: Director/Playwright/Performer: Wael Kadour (Syria)

Synopsis: Braveheart is a multilingual play, performed in Arabic with French subtitles, that tells the story of two individuals in exile after they immigrate to France. Aline is a Syrian refugee who survived the horrors of Syrian prisons and is now trying to rebuild her life while living in fear of being found by her executioner, who has reportedly also immigrated to Europe. She forms a relationship with her classmate from French lessons: Mohammad, a widower and former Syrian taxi driver. However, as the story progresses, so do their power dynamics, and their relationship gradually starts to mirror – whether in Aline’s mind or in reality – the dynamic she experienced with the officer who abused her. The young woman’s doubts grow about a possible overlap between Mohammad and her abuser. Through this intimate psychological tension, the play extends beyond their personal story to address themes of individual and collective memory, trauma as well as the circulation of violence, while echoing broader questions about the global injustice of events occurring in Syria.

Source: https://www.artcena.fr/magazine/critiques/braveheart-de-wael-kadour-mise-en-scene-mohamad-a
Title: Broken Tailbone

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 2017

Produced by:

Creative Team: Brian Quirt | Written and performed by Carmen Aguirre Director: Brian Quirt

Synopsis: In Broken Tailbone, Carmen Aguirre transforms a dance lesson into a bold, immersive solo performance exploring Latin American resistance, exile, and sensual liberation. Set in a makeshift dance hall, Aguirre leads the audience through salsa, cumbia, merengue, and more, using each rhythm to share personal and political stories—from growing up under Chilean dictatorship to the healing power of dance halls. Blending humor, history, and vulnerability, Broken Tailbone invites participants to shed inhibition and move toward joyful self-affirmation.

Source: https://www.mooneyontheatre.com/2019/10/06/review-broken-tailbone-nightswimming-theatre-factory-theatre/
Title: Caravana

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2024

Produced by: IATI

Creative Team: Carlos Morton | Playwright:Carlos Morton Director:Barbara Bosch

Synopsis: Synopsis :Edy, Leo, and Rowena leave Honduras for the U.S., forming a theater troupe and inventing a puppet named Cipote to fund their journey. Disguised in folklore costumes, they cross Guatemala and Mexico, even braving La Bestia, where Rowena suffers a miscarriage. At the border, asylum, separations, and deportations follow in a comedy of errors. Their odyssey ends in limbo—neither fully here nor there, caught between hope and displacement.

Source: https://www.iatitheater.org/shows/cimientos/caravana