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: Counting and Cracking

Geography: Oceania > Australia

Year: 2019

Produced by: Belvoir St Theatre and Co-Curious; Kuriniji later presented at Edinburgh International Festival and the NYU Skirball in partnership with The Public Theater

Creative Team: Written by S. Shakthidharan with Eamon Flack; directed by Eamon Flack

Synopsis: Counting and Cracking follows a Sri Lankan-Australian family across four generations, moving between Colombo and Sydney from 1956 to 2004. A story of exile, love, migration and heartbreak, the narrative is intergenerational splitting focus across various time periods and continents from Sri Lanka’s civil unrest in the 1950s to the Migration Act of Australia in 2004. With a cast of 19 performers from six different countries, the production stages family history alongside the political fracture that lead to civil conflict and Tamil displacement. Radha’s flight from Sri Lanka with her unborn child becomes the beginning of a larger story about making a home in Australia. Performed by a large multilingual ensemble, the work connects personal memory to national history without reducing either to a single account. The production displays the interconnected effects of migration, both politically and linguistically and the difficulties of cultural belonging.

Source: Belvoir St Theatre, Event Listing for Counting and Cracking: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/counting-and-cracking-2024/ Edinburgh International Festival, Event Listing for Counting and Cracking: https://www.eif.co.uk/archive/counting-and-cracking Public Theater, Event Listing for Counting and Cracking: https://publictheater.org/productions/season/2425/counting-and-cracking/ The Guardian, Review of Counting and Cracking by Tim Bryne: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/article/2024/jun/20/counting-and-cracking-how-a-three-hour-sri-lan kan-war-epic-became-one-of-the-great-australian-plays
Title: Crossroads Seen in Daylight (낮에 본 갈림길)

Geography: Asia > Eastern Asia > South Korea

Year: 2026

Produced by: Theatre Company Baeda

Creative Team: Written by Somin; directed by Jeong Ye-jin; scenography by Kim Ji-woo; music by Chae Seok-jin

Synopsis: Crossroads Seen in Daylight places two women in a small South Korean reservoir village. Cheongmi has settled there after defecting from North Korea and hopes marriage will secure a stable future. Yugyeong wants to leave the village and imagines a relationship with a Japanese person as a route elsewhere. Their desired movements point in opposite directions, yet both believe another place may allow a different life. The production draws loosely on The Tale of Sim Cheong while avoiding a sensational reconstruction of escape from North Korea. Cheongmi’s defector identity is part of everyday community life rather than the production’s sole dramatic event. This allows migration to be examined through settlement and trust. The work asks what happens after a politically charged border crossing becomes part of ordinary relationships.

Source: Seoul Theatre Association, production listing and complete credits: https://stheater.or.kr/perform-ad/?bmode=view&idx=172422912 ABC News Korea, production feature and synopsis: https://www.abcn.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=89617
Title: Cry for the Poor (窮人的呼聲)

Geography: Asia > Eastern Asia > Taiwan

Year: 2017

Produced by: Centre for Applied Theatre, Taiwan, working with migrant-worker organisations

Creative Team: Workshop and creative process led by Lai Shu-ya; developed collectively with almost thirty Filipino migrant workers

Synopsis: Cry for the Poor was developed over several months with Filipino migrant workers living in Taiwan. Its title comes from a piece by participant Joseph Christian P. Aranas recognised through Taiwan’s Migrant Workers Literature Award. The performers use their own experiences as material, investigating their own employment conditions and the emotional effects of prolonged separation from family. The production emerged from People’s Theatre workshops as participants shaped which experiences became public and how those experiences were represented. The work also creates a collective migrant voice without suggesting that every worker’s circumstances are identical. The audience is reminded that Taiwan depends upon employment relationships that can restrict personal freedom which separate workers from support networks at home.

Source: Centre for Applied Theatre, Taiwan, official migrant-theatre project page: https://www.catt.org.tw/%E5%AF%A6%E8%B8%90%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C/voices-of-the-drifters_ catt/%E7%A7%BB%E5%B7%A5%E5%8A%87%E5%A0%B4 Performing Arts Reviews, production discussion: https://pareviews.ncafroc.org.tw/comments/05d488c1-f1c4-4a7f-8a57-7123e0547290
Title: Cu’ Fu’

Geography: Americas > Northern America > Canada

Year: 1994

Produced by: Charly Chiarelli Productions

Creative Team: Written & Performed by Charly Chiarelli

Synopsis: Stories of a Sicilian family in Canada. Calogero (Charly) Chiarelli is one of Canada’s best known storytellers, and a virtuoso harmonica player. Cu’Fu is Charly’s hilarious and touching tribute to his crazy Sicilian family in the North End of Hamilton. His father’s bewilderment at the automatic record changer, his mother’s uncanny ability to read faces, and the unexpected reaction of both when they discover Charly is smoking “Mario Lanza” (aka marijuana), create a portrait at once affectionate and funny.

Source: https://charlychiarellimusic.wixsite.com/website/cu-fu | https://www.amazon.ca/CuFu-Sicilian-Mr-Charly-Chiarelli/dp/0992009634
Title: Curtsy of Cream: Struggle for a Better Dream

Geography: Africa > Eastern Africa > Uganda

Year: 2025

Produced by: Batalo East

Creative Team: Choreographed by Kenneth Desire Tereka; performed by Yutta Konvictz Dance Company

Synopsis: Curtsy of Cream examines Ugandans who leave home in search of overseas employment known as kyeyo. The production was inspired by the experience of a woman who was exploited and isolated due to the promise of a brighter future. Movement carries the emotional progression from hope towards disillusionment and through the use of live music, gives the journey a collective dimension. The piece also considers the debt accumulated before departure, when families sell possessions or borrow money to fund migration. After return, economic pressure can be intensified. The migrant must confront trauma alongside expectations that the journey should have produced success. By placing this account within dance, the production represents experiences that may be difficult to communicate through direct individual testimony.

Source: New Vision, premiere and creative information: https://www.newvision.co.ug/category/entertainment/curtsy-of-cream-dance-theatre-exposes-the-str-NV_ 223421
Title: Dance of the Migrants

Geography: Africa > Western Africa > Nigeria

Year: 2019

Produced by: International Organization for Migration through the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration

Creative Team: Directed by Lancelot Imasuen; created with returnees and prospective migrants

Synopsis: Dance of the Migrants used movement to represent the emotional stages of irregular migration and return. The physical theatre production makes bodily exhaustion visible without requiring every participant to narrate private experiences directly. Dancing communicates fear and expectation as the group form of the production resists reducing migration to one individual narrative. The work also addressed what happens after return. Migrants may reach their former communities while remaining socially displaced because relatives interpret their return as failure. By involving prospective migrants alongside returnees, the production created an exchange between imagined journeys and experiences already endured.

Source: IOM Nigeria, production and community-theatre information: https://nigeria.iom.int/news/theatre-helps-raise-awareness-human-trafficking-most-affected-regions-nigeri a Sengal:
Title: De eeuw van mijn moeder

Geography: Europe > Western Europe > Netherlands

Year: 2021

Produced by: Het Nationale Theater

Creative Team: Written and directed by Eric de Vroedt; dramaturgy by Willemijn Barelds; design by Maze de Boer.

Synopsis: De eeuw van mijn moeder reconstructs the life of Winnie, who arrives in the Netherlands from the Dutch East Indies as a child in 1948. She attempts to become entirely Dutch and distances herself from the Indonesian identity. She marries a Dutch Entrepreneur and later, her son Ramses begins to investigate the colonial history she tried to suppress. The production follows several generations, showing how migration enters family relationships through conflicting memories. Winnie understands assimilation as a route towards autonomy and belonging. Ramses conversely, believes the disavowed past is essential to understanding himself. Their disagreement demonstrates that descendants may inherit a history precisely because it was not openly transmitted. The production connects movement from Indonesia to the Netherlands with decolonisation and the unequal racial order that preceded departure.

Source: Het Nationale Theater, official production page and credits: https://www.hnt.nl/nl/de-eeuw-van-mijn-moeder-jzhm Het Nationale Theater, cast interview about inherited memory and the production: https://www.hnt.nl/nl/antoinette-jelgersma-mijn-moeder-verdrong-best-veel-dingen-daar-heb-ik-altijd-teg en-geprotesteerd-sy1p
Title: Dear Home Office: Still Pending

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Year: 2017

Produced by: Phosphoros Theatre; Edinburgh Festival Fringe and UK touring.

Creative Team: Created by Phosphoros Theatre with performers who had experience of the UK asylum system.

Synopsis: Dear Home Office: Still Pending is a verbatim documentary play following first-hand perspectives of young men who arrived in the UK as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and are now facing adulthood and uncertain futures. As a celebration of resilience and boyhood, the production combines humorous devised theatre and testimony. Focusing on the legal and emotional uncertainty produced by the UK assylum process, characters navigate college plans and court cases, balancing media interest and pressures to “perform” their refugee identity to officials and audiences. The title itself emphasises the bureaucratic processes that structure their lives exposing exploitative and complexed systems that prevent the boys from securing stable futures.

Source: Phosphros theatre on Dear Home Office: Still Pending: https://www.phosphorostheatre.com/dear-home-office-still-pending Critical stages article on ‘Unheard Voices, Unseen Faces: Staging Stories of Male Refugee Youth: https://www.critical-stages.org/14/unseen-faces-and-unheard-voices-how-a-group-of-refugee-teenage-boy s-living-in-the-uk-brought-their-hidden-stories-to-the-stage-in-dear-home-office/ Broadway baby review on Dear Home Office: Still Pending: https://broadwaybaby.com/shows/dear-home-office-still-pending/720296
Title: Dear Laila

Geography: Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom

Year: 2022

Produced by: Touring installation presented by PlayCo, PuSh Festival, ANTI Festival and other venues

Creative Team: Created by Basel Zaraa

Synopsis: Basel Zaraa’s Dear Laila is an intimate one-person-at-a-time fifteen minute installation that recreates the artist’s destroyed family home in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Addressed to his daughter, Zaraa recalls sights and sounds of his childhood home through his Walkman, that audiences listen to over headphones. This repositions them in the perspective of a child, listening to parental narration of the past. Employing tactile detail and recorded storytelling, attendees will sit alone with a miniature of Zaraa’s former home as they as they encounter his story of Palestinian displacement and exile. Rather than using large-scale crisis imagery, the installation focuses on everyday objects and the emotional labour of explaining home after its destruction. The audience encounters loss carefully through touch and attention as Dear Laila emphasises the joys of community and family.

Source: Playco, Event Listing of Dear Laila: https://playco.org/event/dear-laila PuSh festival description of Dear Laila: https://pushfestival.ca/shows/dear-laila/ Good Chance theatre, artist development post for Dear Laila: https://www.goodchance.org.uk/stories/basel-zaraa
Title: Detained

Geography: Americas > Northern America > United States of America

Year: 2022

Produced by: The Fountain Theatre (Los Angeles)

Creative Team: Director: Mark Valdez | Written by France-Luce Benson | Conceived and co-created by Judy Rabinovitz

Synopsis: This production follows Claudia, a lawyer assisting in several cases involving immigrants facing deportation. These cases span from a roofer from Guatemala and her daughter, a veteran from Trinidad and a recent Columbia graduate from Eritrea. Claudia is faced again and again with past infractions that are hauled against the characters in order to detain them. Each character deals with their own states of anxiety and frustration with the hypocrisies of immigration law in the United States. The snapshots examine characters with a wide range of ages, experiences, and home countries as each of them contends with being forced to leave.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-02-24/review-detained-at-the-fountain-theatre