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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

Traveling and Transnationalism, Interculturalism, Multiculturalism

On this page you can find sources about traveling and transnationalism, interculturalism and multiculturalism. There is the difference between these notions, which has to be highlighted. Where ‘multicultural’ relates to varied cultural groups existing independently of one another, ‘intercultural’ refers to something occurring between different cultures. The former is passive, involving these groups existing in their own separate ways. The latter is active and describes interaction between culturally diverse people.1 The greatest challenge to the current debate on multiculturalism and interculturalism as a set of policies is the power of transnationalism. On a macro and/or micro level, both, multiculturalism and interculturalism are developed as a theory, a narrative and political paradigm in response to the management of cultural diversity within the nation-state in order to redefine citizenship, nationhood, as well as local and national solidarity. Transnationalism, however, has been developed as an experience of migrants and minorities, settled in different national societies interacting with each other beyond borders.2

Traveling and Transnationalism

The purpose of this special issue is to address the gap in the scholarship on theatre and politics in Turkey and its diasporas. Organized thematically and chronologically, the essays cover the period from the rise of European theatre and the transformation of Ottoman performance genres in the nineteenth century to the work of minoritarian theatres and independent companies in contemporary Turkey. While each essay focuses on a specific production, dramatic text, or performance genre, the authors situate their analyses within a broader historical and artistic framework. With this introduction, we aim to complement their work by presenting an historical overview of theatre in Turkey and its diasporas as well as a brief discussion of contemporary trends and recent productions. (from the introduction)

In Russia, documentary theatre can be seen as a challenge to bureaucratic logic. Teatr.doc, the first documentary theatre to open in Moscow, has recorded a “human document” for undocumented immigrants by staging plays about the lives of ethnic minorities in Moscow. Recently threatened with the loss of its 12-year-old basement space, Teatr.doc must be studied as an institution that created space for public discussion despite increasing state supervision of culture. This paper describes Teatr.doc’s efforts to document the everyday lives of undocumented labourers living amidst ethnic stensions in Moscow. (from the introduction to the article)

This article analyses Get Back (2016), a play written by Diego Ameixeiras and directed by Jorge Coira. The text serves to explore how the new Galician diaspora is represented through the arts. Issues related to migration, racism, and precariousness bloom naturally from a play that gathers four Galician migrants in London, together with a British-born character. Old and new waves of Galician migrants are juxtaposed through different characters, illustrating the complexity of this recent migratory phenomenon. (the abstract from the article)

In the last twenty years, several cultural and educational organizations developed amongst the Serbian migrants in Vienna, and they engage in presenting modern day Serbian culture and the lives of migrants in a different light and with a different approach than some other clubs of our former migrants. The goal the autors have set with this study is to present just one segment of these activities, and those are the amateur theater plays that our migrants take part in playing themselves and about themselves; specifically, the group “Non-Aligned Dilatants”. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This article examines Michael Pinchbeck and Ollie Smith’s theatrical adaptation of A Seventh Man, the 1975 book by John Berger and photographer Jean Mohr studying the experience of migrant workers in Europe. Pinchbeck and Smith’s 2020 adaptation uses immersive performance strategies in dialogue with a multi-voiced, cross-disciplinary publication that itself aims to produce an immersive or ‘animated’ reader engagement. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This dissertation explores how the theme of migration in Peruvian theatre and performance from the 1950s until the beginning of the twenty-first century constitutes a response to Western discourses on development and modernity. Framing the arguments with decolonial and postcolonial theory, the author posits performance and theatre as powerful tools for contesting the colonial aspects of modernity, development, and globalization. By analyzing works by Sebastián Salazar Bondy, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Hernán Cortés, César Vega Herrera, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, Gervasio Juan Vilca, Javier Maraví Aranda, and Julio Ortega, along with two festivals from the city of Cusco, this dissertation interrogates how Peru’s theatre protested racial discrimination and helped to craft regional and provincial identities as a response to the increasing encroachment of globalized ways of life. (taken from the dissertation)

This article discusses “My Home”, a piece of verbatim theatre by London Bubble, which researched and portrayed people from the communities represented to explore stories from both long-established and more recent migrants who live in different parts of the city and are often overlooked in everyday British society. “My Home” is part of a long tradition of creative work that uses domestic space in performance and to tell stories about migration. (from the book)

This volume investigates the representation of the migrant and migration in the art, and the fact that the arts can provide readers and viewers with a space for fluid knowledge production and affective expansion and that within that overarching function, artistic works play three main roles with regard to representing migration: undertaking a socio-political and cultural critique, presenting alternative views to stereotypes that highlight the singularity and complexity of the migrant and providing proposals for different futures. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This dissertation addresses the lives and plays of Ugandan-born playwrights Deborah Asiimwe, Charles Mulekwa, and George Bwanika Seremba, and American-born Ugandan playwright Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine. Their relationships with one another and with their homeland suggest an emerging artistic movement or artworld circumscribed by place and its absence, and constituted in the constellation of the artists’ lives in various locales. The work is a hybrid of genres, including biography of living playwrights, literary analysis, historiography, and theory, whose goal is to trace the representations of identity, home, and migration the four Ugandan playwrights create through their ongoing work and lives outside Uganda. Drawing on theories of performance, migration and exile, art, and nation, the author synthesizes history and identity from the global and national to the individual. (abstract from the dissertation)

Nicole Cote examines literary representations of Franco-Canadians’ linguistic minorization as they negotiate with hegemonic English. She suggests that Franco-Canadian theatre reflects the self-translation of the minorities through its heterolinguism and stages their linguistic and cultural hybridity. These plays offer heteroglossic representations that bear witness to the multiple tensions of the minority and migrant communities. They represent the cultural/linguistic self-translation at work, reflecting identities torn between the need to forge a stable core and the adaptation necessary to survive as a minority within the hegemonic group. These dramatic representations attest, on a formal level, to the vulnerability of French in a minority context, as well as, on a thematic one, to the resilience of minority communities in constant self-translation, as shown in Elephant Wake, by Joey Tremblay; Sex, Lies et les Franco-Manitobains, L’annee du Big Mac, and Fort Mac, by Marc Prescott; and Rearview, by Gilles Poulin-Denis. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to theater that engages with international stories, histories, conditions and experiences of migration and its relationship with ‘foreignness’. Cox is concerned with the representation and participation of migrants and refugees in theater. They consider key issues in contemporary performance on an international scale.

This volume analyzes innovative forms of media and music (art installations, television commercials, photography, films, songs, telenovelas) to examine the performance of migration in contemporary culture. To understand the connection between migration and diverse media, the authors examine how migration is represented in film, television, music, and art, but also how media shape the ways in which host country and homeland are imagined. Among the topics considered are new mediated forms for representing migration, widening the perspective on the ways these representations may be analyzed; readings of enactments of memory in trans- and inter-disciplinary ways; and discussions of globalization and transnationalism, inviting us to rethink traditional borders in respect to migration, nation states, as well as disciplines. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This paper draws on press reviews, film production and distribution records, and interviews with Mexican Americans in order to illuminate the historical development of the spanish-speaking audience in the United states through the 1930s. Spanish speakers in Los Angeles, San Antonio, New York, and other cities devoted small-town theaters and movie palaces to the exhibition of Mexican film, provided the fan base for its thriving star system, and made the United States a critical market for its films. In particular, Mexican audiences living and working in the U.S. embraced the comedia ranchera, a uniquely Mexican musical genre, and helped to sustain its popularity through the “golden age” of Mexican cinema. (from the article)

Emphasizing the resilience of theatre arts in the midst of significant political change, this book spotlights the emergence of new performance styles in the wake of collapsed political systems. Centering on theatrical works from the late nineteenth century to the present, twelve original essays written by prominent theatre scholars showcase the development of new work after social revolutions, independence campaigns, the overthrow of monarchies, and world wars. Global in scope, this book features performances occurring across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The essays attend a range of live events—theatre, dance, and performance art—that stage subaltern experiences and reveal societies in the midst of cultural, political, and geographic transition. This collection is an engaging resource for students and scholars of theatre and performance; world history; and those interested in postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and transnationalism. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

In Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones, Marta Effinger-Crichlow expertly draws together four case studies of African American women to describe how black women constructed “western space” over time. Using an interdisciplinary approach with a focus on history and theatre, Effinger-Crichlow explains how African American women’s westward movement reflected everyday performances of migration, as well as symbolic and intellectual journeys. (from the review – https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5323/jafriamerhist.102.2.0260 )

This book clears a space for such discourse by examining the ways in which ethnic and racialized minorities, citizens and migrants, trouble the very notion of cohesive European identities through activism and creative practices. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe offers an invaluable contribution to the growing study of ethnic minorities in Europe and their strategies of resistance, particularly through their engagement and use of the public sphere. At the same time, El-Tayeb’s “fusionist” approach adds a valuable dimension to other methodological lenses, such as intersectionality and African diaspora studies, to name but two. (from the review – https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/article/515071 )

This chapter describes and analyses three different urban occupation experiences in Rome. (1) The mobilisation of young adult activists that occupy an old factory facility in the peripheral area of the capital. This group pursues a community-based squatting, including migrant families and Roma people, while hosting a popular contemporary art museum. (2) The occupation of a public building in the downtown Rome that hosts hundreds of migrants. This squat offers many events, including concert and political meetings, becoming an important connecting place for radical left-wing activists in the city. (3) The occupation of the Valle Theatre by artists (especially actors) and activists. Instead of integrating the system, these agencies aim to create or re-found alternative institutions, asserting a sense of justice, social rights, a ‘right to the city’, creativity and ethics in opposition to the neoliberal system and cultural market. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Troubling Vision analyzes the way black culture producers use visuality and performance to render “black life… intelligible and valued, as well as consumable and disposable” (6). Through analysis of performance-based photography, documentary photography, drama, advertising, fashion, and digital media art, the book develops four concepts: troubling vision, non-iconicity, excess flesh, and the visible seam. Speaking to contemporary and ongoing issues in visual culture, media studies, performance studies, critical race theory, popular culture, and feminist studies, Troubling Vision demonstrates the lasting importance of black cultural workers actively participating in crafting the visual landscape. (from the review: https://journals-scholarsportal-info.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/details/0163755x/v39i0002/244_tvpvabnrf.xml )

This is a study of cultural difference in contemporary Canadian theatre. Theatre in Canada has long been a forum for cultural communities to celebrate their traditions, but it has now emerged as a forum for staging stories that stretch beyond local and national communities. Combining archival research and performance analysis to discuss a set of performances mainly in Toronto, Staging Strangers offers a fresh look at how theatre can be an important site of cultural encounter in a global age. The book adopts the guiding metaphor of “the stranger” to discuss the many ways cultural difference is made to appear-or disappear-onstage. More than a descriptive text about a shift toward the global, the book offers a vision of theatre that contributes meaningfully to global ethics, that is, a sense of ethical esponsibility to global issues and distant strangers. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

  • García, C. S. (2004). Contested Discourses on National Identity: Representing Nicaraguan Immigration to Costa Rica. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 23(4), 434–445. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27733689

This article explores the ways in which the immigration of Nicaraguans to Costa Rica is represented by Costa Rican institutions and individuals through public discourses and everyday life. Three discourses are considered: intellectual claims, fictional works, and stories written by Nicaraguan children. The author talks about the most applauded fictional piece dealing with Nicaraguan migrants in Costa Rica has been a theatre play, ‘El Nica’. (from the article)

The book examines how internationalization affects the processes and aesthetics of theatre, highlighting the examples drawn from Australia and Germany from the 1930s to today. The book includes chapters by specialists in popular commercial theatre, disability theatre, Indigenous performance, theatre by and for refugees and other migrants, young people as performers, opera and operetta, and spoken art theatre. (provided by the publisher) Theatre and Internationalization prompts readers to reflect across a broad range of topics and presents them with useful tools to carry out further study. The studies found here will be particularly useful towards developing a language to articulate the complex realities of stage practice and performance, drawing from a considerable theoretical apparatus. The case-study grounds the contributions and ensures their concreteness, in an area of study that would otherwise risk falling into sterile abstraction.  (from the review – https://journals.ucc.ie/index.php/scenario/article/view/scenario-16-1-13 )

The aim of this study is to explore the participation of migrants in socio-cultural activities related to arts, theatre, concerts and sports events and its role in their subjective well-being. The empirical analysis relies on data derived from the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey over the period 1984–2017 and the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study covering the period 2010–2013. The findings of the study suggest that socio-cultural integration can be an alternative policy of creating inclusive, secure and happier communities. (provided by the author)

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the intersections between contemporary theatre and performance, the field of memory studies and the politics of memory across the globe. Beginning by offering a fresh critical snapshot of the major theoretical foundations for the study of memory today, the author presents vivid theatrical examples drawn from a wide variety of cultural contexts and illustrates the centrality of memory for the theatre as well as the vital role of theatre in transmitting individual and collective memories. Featuring in-depth case studies of a range of performance works – including Lola Arias’s Minefield, Yael Ronen’s Common Ground and Robert Lepage’s The Seven Streams of the River Ota – it explores how theatre artists have grappled with issues of memory and the tensions between memory and history. A final section examines the problematics of memory in a global context by exploring the subject of migration/immigration. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This article explores the history of El Cine Yost (The Yost Theater) in Santa Ana, California, and the role of the Louis and Phoebe Olivos Sr. family in creating space for the development of ethnic Mexican identity and community in Orange County, California from 1930 to 1990. The author argues that El Cine Yost exemplifies the central connections between space, place, and identity in the lived experiences of ethnic Mexicans across the US-Mexico borderlands. Further, this history disrupts the master narrative of Orange County as a place of Anglo-American/European settler history, which has ignored and left undocumented the affirmative presence and contributions of Latinas/os in the region. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This article explores the representation of migration and border crossing in Latina (1980), a play by Milcha Sánchez Scott that stages the difficulties associated with this journey. In 2010 Senate Bill 1070, one of the strictest anti-immigration legislative acts to be enforced, encouraged racial profiling in the identification of border crossers in the state of Arizona. Detained in the Desert (2011), a play by Josefina Lόpez, is a Chicana response to the passing of SB 1070, and contributes to a deeper understanding of the fraught experiences of migrant women’s lives. The study of the plays places an emphasis on transnational community building and audience engagement and builds on a range of recent critical work by border theorists and scholars such as Alicia Schmidt Camacho and Deborah Boehm, and theatre and performance critics such as Diana Taylor. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This article introduces notions of conviviality as both a research practice and a research outcome through an exploration of the racialised and gendered experiences of migrant mothers and young girls in the current hostile environment for migrants in the UK. The authors describe how participatory arts and action research methods can challenge existing knowledge production on migrant families, by enabling a convivial dialogue between groups of participants and researchers. (taken from the article)

This article discusses Antonine Maillet, an Acadian artist who has chosen to live and write in Quebec. Her work is nostalgic, but at the same time it is important for her to not sink into the cult of the past, but to safeguard the heritage while looking towards the future.

This study explores the potential of Canadian immigrant community-based theatre as a means of promoting empowerment among newcomers. Alongside an integrated literature review, the paper centres on a case study of a group of five Canadian immigrant women and their coordinator who participated in a community-based theatre project in Toronto called Tomorrow’s Time, funded by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and facilitated by Working Women Community Centre. The paper concludes that the processes involved in community-based theatre contributed to the participants’ personal and social empowerment in terms of developing confidence, acting skills, integration within communities, and involvement in peer education. (the abstract taken from the dissertation)

The book’s project is to consider theatre’s role in getting us to think about “the malleability of the place we call home”, frequently highlighting, in contributor Ann Shanahan’s words, “a meaningful, perhaps even essential, connection between houses, women, and their theatrical representations—a connection with important ramifications for contemporary dramatic criticism and theatre production”. The volume is in three parts. Part 1, “Family Homes on Stage,” features chapters analyzing plays that have already been the subject of essays, books, and reviews. Part 2, “Making Home Material,” comprises first-person accounts of working on widely differing productions of plays where house and home are negotiated sites. Part 3, “Home as Public Performance,” situates individuals’ relations to houses, homemaking, and hometowns within the context of larger communities and cultural spheres. (from the review – Chansky, D. (2021). [Review of the book Performing Dream Homes: Theater and the Spatial Politics of the Domestic Sphere ed. by Emily Klein, Jennifer-Scott Mobley, and Jill Stevenson]. Theatre Journal 73(2), 258-259. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tj.2021.0045. )

Although current theories of diaspora argue for a break between an older irrevocable migration from one nation to another and a new transnational movement between host country and birthplace, research on nineteenth- as well as twentieth-century North America demonstrates that earlier migration also had a transnational dimension. The cultural consequences of this two-way traffic include syncretic performance forms, institutions, and audiences, whose legitimacy depended on engagement with but not total assimilation in local conventions and on the mobilization of touristic nostalgia in, say, Cantonese opera in California or Bavarian-American musicals in New York, to appeal to nativist and immigrant consumers. Today, syncretic theatre of diaspora is complicated on the one hand by a theatre of diasporic residence, in which immigrants dramatize inherited conflicts in the host country, such as Québécois separatism in Canada, along with problems of migrants, among them South Asians, and on the other by a theatre of non-residence, touring companies bringing theatre from the home country, say India, to ‘non-resident Indians’ and local audiences in the United States. (description from the article)

The author argues that understanding Asian immigration to the United States is fundamental to understanding the racialized economic and political foundations of the nation. She argues that rather than attesting to the absorption of cultural difference into the universality of the national political sphere, the Asian immigrant – at odds with the cultural, racial, and linguistic forms of the nation – displaces the temporality of assimilation. In this uniquely interdisciplinary study, Lowe examines the historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic meanings of immigration in relation to Asian Americans. Extending the range of Asian American critique, Immigrant Acts will interest readers concerned with race and ethnicity in the United States, American cultures, immigration, and transnationalism. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas is the first collection of essays to discuss the presence of Greek drama across the continents and archipelagos of the Americas from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. The classics have never been tied by geographical nor linguistic boundaries, and in the case of the Americas long colonial histories have often imposed those boundaries arbitrarily. This compendious volume tracks networks across continents and oceans and uncovers the ways in which the shared histories and practices in the performance arts in the Americas have routinely defied national boundaries. Lavishly illustrated and with contributions from Classicists, Latin American specialists, Theatre and Performance theorists, and historians, there are also interviews with writers. This 52-chapter volume seeks to define the complex contours of the reception of Greek drama in the Americas. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This study sheds light on the rhetoric of ethnic self-expression which contemporary American minority playwrights use to explore their diasporic identities and empower their ethnic communities. It also explores the nature of contemporary ethnic theaters and the function they serve in assimilating people of diverse ethnic backgrounds into the American mainstream culture. The American plays discussed in this article include the Chinese-American David Henry Hwang’s F.O.B., that depicts the social dilemmas of Chinese immigrants, and M. Butterfly, that has problematized the entire notion of ethnicity and has revealed the distorted stereotypical images of oriental cultures as perceived by the West; the Korean-American playwrights Julia Cho’s The Architecture of Loss, and Philip Kan Gotanda’s Day Standing on its Head; the African-American Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West, which portrays from a feminist perspective the Blacks’ Great Migration; Hispanic theater represented by Milcha Sánchez-Scott’s Latina, and Silvia Gonzalez’ The Migrant Farmworker’s Son. The plays contain themes that range from displacement or diaspora, to exile, migration, border-crossing to create new worlds, nationhood, belonging, cultural hybridity, and even invisibility. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

In this article the author introduces Creating Ground, a not-for-profit organisation that works with women from migrant backgrounds to promote intersectional anti-racist cross-cultural awareness, learning and sharing across different communities in South East London through collaborative arts and educational projects. She reflects on the use of participatory arts, social action and training to bring migrant women together, improve wellbeing and create change for these women at a personal and a community level. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book brings together essays on theatre by people of African descent in North America, Cuba, Italy, the UK, Israel and Tasmania. Several chapters present overviews of particular national contexts, others offer insights into play texts or specific performances. Offering a mix of academic and practitioner’s points of views, Volume 8 in the African Theatre series analyses and celebrates various aspects of African diasporic theatre worldwide. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book is an ambitious project that aims to reclaim the agency of performers to facilitate cultural dialogue even within the globalized and decontextualized framework of the international theatre festival. Adopting a comparative approach that is fitting with the imperatives of the “Studies in International Performance” series, this book focuses on a specific transnational community—that of the Lusophone, or Portuguese-speaking, group of nations—in order to bring a new, transnational dimension to the discussions of global flows and local epistemologies that dominate festival scholarship. The author trains a sharp ethnographic eye on African performances staged at the festivals, revealing how festival productions and their aftermath can generate new perspectives on race and gender, colonial trauma, and the economics of cultural globalization. Featuring in-depth analysis of performances and artist interviews from Cape Verde, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique – countries with vibrant theatre practices and vexed colonial pasts – the book reveals how international festivals can be valuable platforms for new intercultural dialogues and diplomatic possibilities. (both from the review (https://journals-scholarsportal-info.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/details/00405574/v56i0001/124_.xml ) and from OMNI)

The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration provides a wide survey of theatre and performance practices related to the experience of global movements, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Given the largest number of people ever suffering from forced displacement today, much of the book centres around the topic of refuge and exile and the role of theatre in addressing these issues. The book is structured in six sections, the first of which is dedicated to the major theoretical concepts related to the field of theatre and migration including exile, refuge, displacement, asylum seeking, colonialism, human rights, globalization, and nomadism. The subsequent sections are devoted to several dozen case studies across various geographies and time periods that highlight, describe and analyse different theatre practices related to migration. The volume serves as a prestigious reference work to help theatre practitioners, students, scholars, and educators navigate the complex field of theatre and migration. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance traces how manifestations of Latine self-determination in contemporary U.S. theatre and performance practices affirm the value of Latine life in a theatrical culture that constantly and consciously strives to undermine it. This collection draws on fifty interdisciplinary contributions written by some of the leading Latine theatre and performance scholars and practitioners in the U.S. The project reveals the continued growth of Latine theatre and performance, through essays covering, but not limited to playwriting, casting practices, representation, training, wrestling with anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity, theatre for young audiences, community empowerment, and the market forces that govern the U.S. theatre industry. This book enters conversations in performance studies, ethnic studies, American studies, and Latina/e/o/x studies by taking up performance scholar Diana Taylor’s call to consider the ways that “embodied and performed acts generate, record, and transmit knowledge.” This collection is an essential resource for students, scholars and theatremakers seeking to explore, understand and further the huge range and significance of Latine performance. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Murphy, K.M. (2018). Mapping Memory: Visuality, Affect, and Embodied Politics in the Americas. New York: Fordham University Press. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/63128

In this book the author investigates the use of memory as a means of contemporary sociopolitical intervention. She focuses specifically on visual case studies, including documentary film, photography, performance, new media, and physical places of memory, from sites ranging from the Southern Cone to Central America and the U.S.–Mexican borderlands. Murphy develops new frameworks for analyzing how visual culture performs as an embodied agent of memory and witnessing, arguing that visuality is inherently performative. By analyzing the performative elements, or strategies, of visual texts—such as embodiment, reenactment, haunting, and the performance of material objects and places Murphy elucidates how memory is both anchored in and extracted from specific bodies, objects, and places. Drawing together diverse theoretical strands, Murphy originates the theory of “memory mapping”, which tends to the ways in which memory is strategically deployed in order to challenge official narratives that often neglect or designate as transgressive certain memories or experiences. Ultimately, Murphy argues, memory mapping is a visual strategy to ask, and to challenge, why certain lives are rendered visible and thus grievable and others not. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

In this paper the author talks about the transformative role and capacity of art and the importance of biographical (life story) research and the notion of ethno-mimesis (combination of art and ethnography) as critical theory in practice/praxis. This new approach focuses attention on the importance of renewing methodologies through inter-disciplinarity to better interpret social issues such as: i) migration, both forced and free, ii) the experiences of new arrivals, and iii) to facilitate the production of new knowledge and counter hegemonic texts to support the shifts taking place. The author refers to three projects, Global Refugees: Exile Displacement and Belonging, Making the Connections: Arts, Migration and Diaspora, and Way from Home. (from the introduction)

The article focuses on the activities of the Nimis Groupe, the international theatre collective consisting of twelve actors, with six from Belgium and six from France. In 2015, Roxane Paire conducted an interview with the group while they were developing a play titled “Ceux que j’ai rencontrés ne m’ont peut-être pas vu” (Those That I’ve Met Probably Did Not See Me). The main point of this article is to view the ethical considerations of the European actors collaborating with migrants who had not yet attained legal recognition as citizens in Belgium and France.

This article explores the performative nature of immigration infrastructure in the United Kingdom. The author discusses two plays about migration to the UK – Illegalised (2019) and The Claim (2019) – which each focus on its infrastructural aspects, arguing that these theatrical events can be situated alongside other performances in which such infrastructure is at play. Unlike many recent UK plays about transnational migration, Illegalised and The Claim theatricalise immigration systems, rather than the experiences of migrants themselves. The scope of this article is limited in its discussion of UK theatre and immigration infrastructure. (taken from the article)

This article discusses Incendies, the adaptation of the work Incendies The Blood of Promises by playwright Wajdi Mouawad, and staged in 2003 in France and Quebec. In this article the latter’s work is being situated within Quebec dramaturgy and migrant theater, and then the processes used by Mouawad in the theater, including spatio-temporality and stage writing, are being analyzed.

Framed within the geopolitics of empathy, we describe the process of taking a testimonial play, based on verbatim research interview transcripts with Filipina domestic workers, their families, employers, and nanny agents in Vancouver, Canada, to the Philippines to present to audiences there, including to members of domestic workers’ families. Interviews with seven family members who attended the play offer some clues to assessing performance as a space for critical, sometimes uncomfortable forms of empathy. Rather than a purely affirming experience, we argue that empathy can lead to a fuller recognition of the suffering on which one’s good life depends and challenge fantasies of the good life, in this case, attainable through migration to Canada. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This work attempts to show how Theater takes over this space and, according to its own modalities, brings out the specific figurations of this Other space, fantasized or real, imaginary or symbolic. The various articles analyze the representations of Elsewhere in the theater, to propose their contours, function and scope in the dramaturgies of comedia and modern and post-modern creations. The different space, which can be at the same time geographical, imaginary and linguistic, constantly encourages us to project ourselves into a Beyond the stage. It is this Beyond, plural, multiple, fragmentary and sometimes indefinable which has been the subject of our attention. (translated from the abstract)

Embodied Economies is a thought-provoking Caribbean diasporic voyage that challenges us to rethink our expectations about Latinx culture under neoliberalism. In his accessible yet profoundly learned prose, Israel Reyes offers inspired queer, feminist, and social-science inflected readings of relevant literary and theatrical works in English and Spanish by prize-winning playwrights, novelists, and performers. This book is an eagerly awaited contribution to transnational, hemispheric studies of the Americas. (review by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, author of Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance)

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the Latinx performing arts in what is now the U.S. since the sixteenth century. Volume II looks in depth at the experiences of Latinx individuals on theatre and performance, including Miguel Piñero, Lin-Manuel Miranda, María Irene Fornés, Nilo Cruz, and John Leguizamo, as well as the important role of transnational migration in Latinx communities and identities across the U.S. Overall this book offers an accessible and comprehensive understanding of the field and is ideal for students, researchers, and instructors of theatre studies with an interest in the diverse and complex history of Latinx theatre and performance. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the Latinx performing arts in what is now the U.S. since the sixteenth century. Volume I provides a chronological overview of the evolution of the Latinx community within the U.S., spanning from the 1500s to today, with an emphasis on the Chicano artistic renaissance initiated by Luis Valdez and the Teatro Campesino in the 1960s. This book offers an accessible and comprehensive understanding of the field and is ideal for students, researchers, and instructors of theatre studies with an interest in the diverse and complex history of Latinx theatre and performance. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This monograph tackles transnational Asian theatre from a spatial perspective, and highlights the wide range of approaches which can be taken to examine questions of Asian identity and ethnicity. The author explores the networks between artists of Asian descent (the bulk of them Singaporean Chinese travelling between English-speaking territories) as they perform ‘Asian’ work in international festivals and (often ethnically identified) theatres in places such as Singapore, London, Edinburgh, New York, and Los Angeles. The book is divided into three introductory chapters and six case studies. If the theoretical framework is consistent and nuanced, the disparity of case studies makes the work slightly unbalanced. Overall, Rogers’ work will provide an excellent point of departure for those interested in thinking through the triangular relationship between performance, ethnicity, and space. (from the review – https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/doi/full/10.1080/14631369.2016.1249649 )

The essays in this volume explore the lives and activities of people of African descent – both black and white – in Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. They go beyond the still-dominant Anglo-American or transatlantic emphasis of Black Studies, examining the experiences of Africans, Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans in Germany, France, Portugal, Italy and the Soviet Union, as well as in Britain. Their subjects include people moving between European states and state jurisdictions or from the former colony of one state to another place in Europe, African-born colonial settlers returning to the metropolis, migrants conversing across ethnic and cultural boundaries among ‘Africans’, and visitors for whom the face-to-face encounter with European society involves working across the ‘colour line’ and testing the limits of solidarity. The volume is multidisciplinary, and the contributors include a novelist and a filmmaker who reflect on their own experiences of these complex histories and the challenges of narrating them. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This report from the Migration Policy Institute explores how European societies and cultural institutions can strengthen the participation of migrant-background and minority communities in art and culture, efforts to date to build this type of cultural inclusion, and how this can contribute to more inclusive and cohesive European cities. Interviews with cultural professionals from 11 European countries are drawn upon to examine the inclusion of migrants and minorities. The publication is divided into three sections, focusing on migrants’ and minorities’ inclusion in arts and culture, local practices to promote inclusive artistic and cultural scenes, and strategies to ensure cultural institutions mirror societal diversity. (provided by the institution)

Göze Saner and Saniye Dedeoğlu focus on the lives of Turkish/Kurdish women living in London. By bringing together two separate research projects, an ethnographic study of labour patterns and a participatory community theatre project (Migrant Steps), they examine the effects of neoliberalism on this particular demographic and critically assess possible strategies of resistance. The chapter asks if and how engaging with London outside the dominantly Turkish-speaking neighbourhoods may constitute a form of resistance and lead to positive transformations in the place of women within the home, the community, and the city, to greater freedom and empowerment, and to creating a space in which women can identify and define themselves outside the boundaries of being wife, mother, or daughter. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The interview tells us about “Migrant Steps” – a theatre project that engages migrant women living in the UK and Europe. Starting from the figure of a travelling tortoise and combining methodologies such as psycho-geography, performance art, physical theatre and autobiographical writing, the project explores the participants’ relationship with the cities where they live. (by the author)

This essay attempts to show how contemporary South Asian American theater deals with a wide range of South Asian American experience and in so doing has created a “new aesthetic” within American theater. The plays under study are about the old and new home, about people assimilating into the mainstream or navigating between two cultures or even negotiating a transnational identity. They deal with contested ideas of nation, nationality and allegiance, and also explore the South Asian female body in the new culture. (by the author)

  • Sharifi, A. (2017). Theatre and Migration: Documentation, Influences and Perspectives in European Theatre. In M. Brauneck & ITI Germany (Eds.), Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe: Structures – Aesthetics – Cultural Policy (pp. 321–416). Transcript Verlag. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1xxssd.8

The migratory movements have triggered a cultural transformation whose traces are also perceptible in the European theatre landscape. Despite these systematic reprisals, there is a growing number of immigrant theatre makers who are professionally active in almost every Western European country. This study examines the influence that artists who have migrated to Europe actually have on the European theatre scene. This chapter pursues two goals: to present and discuss the questions of the general study concerning the role of independent theatre in the contemporary European theatre scene with a focus on migration, and to explore the significance of the migration phenomenon for the contemporary European theatre landscape. (abstracts from the book)

This article analyzes the contradictions that are at the heart of the careers of artists from the peripheries, between the injunction to internationalize in order to succeed and the forms of disaffiliation linked to migration. Also it explores the migration of Spanish artists to cities such as Paris, London or Berlin, which has accelerated since Spain joined the European Union, but this has not translated into greater international visibility for these artists. On the contrary, by leaving their original art scene, these artists can find themselves in a situation of “double absence”.

Like earlier mother activism in Latin America, the annual Caravana de Madres Centroamericanas (Caravan of Central American Mothers) through Mexico strategically activates the traditional archetype of mothers as passive, pious, suffering victims whose self-abnegation forces them, almost against their will, out of their supposedly natural domestic sphere. Three elements, however, distinguish the caravana from earlier protests staged by mothers. First, this protest crosses national borders, functioning as a transnational pilgrimage to the memory of the disappeared relative. This stage-in-motion temporarily spotlights and claims the spaces traversed by undocumented migrants in Mexico, attempting to recast those migrants as victims of violence rather than as criminals. Second, through performances of both devotional motherhood and saintly motherhood, the caravana’s mother-based activism de-normalizes violence related to drugs and migration. Third, performances of family reunification staged by the caravana organizers take place in the few cases in which they manage to locate family members who have not fallen prey to violence but have simply resettled in Mexico and abandoned or lost touch with families left behind. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

In March 2021, the theatre company, Seyyar Kumpanya (a collective of Turkish-speaking actors in London), created a digital project called ‘Migrant Shakespeare’. The directorial decision was made to transpose Shakespeare’s characters to the day-to-day contexts that socially and politically transform and define the migrant experience: Caliban becomes a hotel cleaner, King Lear a construction worker, Hamlet a meat packer and Katerina Minola a barmaid, simultaneously subservient while also ironically sarcastic and physically strong. Thus, at one level, all the actors were performing their own migrant identity. In this article the primary aim is to analyse the digital text of the ‘Migrant Shakespeare’ project. It attempts to understand how the experience of contemporary migration may be explored through the similar destabilization inherent in Shakespeare’s dramaturgy. (abstract from the article)

In this paper the author suggests comparing recent critical approaches and debates in the cultural field of transnational migration studies, with a focus on ‘cross-cultural’ and ‘post-migrant’ theatres. This focus will be narrowed down by looking particularly at the discourses of Turkish migration and diaspora surrounding the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in Berlin (Germany), the Arcola Ala-Turka company in Dalston-Hackney (UK), Theater RAST in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), the Turkish American Repertory Theater in Baldwin New York (U.S.), the ReOrient Festival in San Francisco (U.S.) and the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles (U.S.). The author questions the differences in the companies’ self-definitions in relation to their cultural climates and the retellings of the different pathways artists make within the scope of their works and careers. In addition, he explores how these founding ‘narratives of self’ in view of an increased social mobility could be explained through the wider discourses of transnational migration studies, as they are currently being developed in Europe and the U.S. (written by the author – access at the link above)

This essay engages with the concept of the autonomy of migration through an analysis of contemporary migrant performance practices in Greece. The author engages critically with the performative action, activism, and political presence of ELANADISTIKANOUME (Come and see what we do), a performance group Hypatia Vourloumis teaches at the International Center for Hellenic and Mediterranean Studies in Athens, Greece. Active since September 2009 and working in collaboration with indigenous and international theatre and dance practitioners, this fluctuating and makeshift collective of nonprofessional dancers and actors regularly engages in spontaneous performances held across the Athenian cityscape. The author traces the ways in which this collective, which mainly consists of undocumented laborers working within an informal economy, mobilizes performance strategies that simultaneously inhabit, critique, and transform the nation-state. (taken from the article)

Through a series of chapters that offer careful, informed, and thought-provoking close readings of works of American-Jewish culture from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1960-s Weber seeks to trace the dynamics of “the genealogy of Jewish affect among immigrants from Eastern Europe arriving here a century ago and their children.” Through his analyses of works of literature, film, theater broadcasting, and sound recordings, Weber tracks what Raymond Williams termed a “structure of feeling” that dominates much of American-Jewish culture in the immigrant and early post-immigrant period. (from the review – https://www.jstor.org/stable/23887318 )

  • Ybarra, P.A. (2017). Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. (1 ed.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/55917

Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism traces how Latinx theater in the United States has engaged with the policies, procedures, and outcomes of neoliberal economics in the Americas from the 1970s to the present. Ybarra analyzes the work of playwrights María Irene Fornés, Cherríe Moraga, Michael John Garcés, Caridad Svich, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Victor Cazares, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Tanya Saracho, and Octavio Solis. In addressing histories of oppression in their home countries, these playwrights have newly imagined affective political and economic ties in the Americas. They also have rethought the hallmark movements of Latin politics in the United States—cultural nationalism, third world solidarity, multiculturalism—and their many discontents. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Interculturalism

In this work, director and critic Rustom Bharucha presents the first major critique of intercultural theatre from a ‘Third World’ perspective. Bharucha questions the assumptions underlying the theatrical visions of some of the twentieth century’s most prominent theatre practitioners and theorists, including Antonin Artaud, Jerzsy Grotowski, and Peter Brook. He contends that Indian theatre has been mythologised and taken out of context by Western directors and critics. And he presents a detailed dramaturgical analysis of what he describes as an intracultural theatre project, providing an alternative vision of the possibilities of true cultural pluralism. Theatre and the World challenges much of today’s ‘multicultural’ theatre movement. It will be vital reading for anyone interested in the creation or discussion of a non-Eurocentric world theatre. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Bharucha addresses the topic of equitable global exchange, rejecting the idea that the West is everywhere and instead defying the homogenizing and antidemocratic forces of globalization. Bharucha explores the social and political dynamics of emergent cultural practices in the intersections of contemporary theater and the world – for instance in contemporary India, with global issues of intellectual property rights, cultural tourism, and profiling minorities.

What does migration-generated diversity mean for cultural policy and the performing arts scene in Germany and how is it promoted? Through bridging theory and practice, Özlem Canyürek introduces the concept of thinking and acting interculturally, and proposes a set of criteria as a stepping stone for a semantic shift in cultural policy towards achieving a fair and accessible performing arts scene for all. She delineates the framework conditions of a receptive cultural policy to envision cultural diversity in motion to enable the production and dissemination of multiplicity of thoughts, experiences, knowledge, worldviews, and aesthetics of an intercultural society. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Claudia Andrea Cattaneo Clemente. (2022). Cantieri Meticci Theater Company: Method of work and staging of a creole-transcultural company (migrants, asylum seekers, political refugees). Zibaldone (L’Eliana), 10(1–2), 86–118. Available at: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=8484834 

The denomination Creole-transcultural theater was coined by the Italian researchers Maria Cristina Maureci and Marta Niccolai in 2015. It has been used to name a type of theatrical work and expression that combines collaborations between foreigners and locals, without categorically ranking or differentiating the contributions that both make in pursuit of artistic and social objectives. This occurs both at the level of dramaturgy and the creation and staging of the shows of various companies in the world. One of them is Cantieri Meticci, a Bologna company that has been working on this modality since 2005. Initially, the company focused only on cooperative work with refugees and political asylum seekers from some reception centers in Bologna. However, perceiving the need for a more cross-cultural relationship between immigrants and locals, it began to welcome Italian actors of all ages and origins. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book explores the fields of performance studies and theatre history, and to larger issues of global cultural exchange. The authors offer a provocative argument for rethinking the scholarly assessment of how diverse performative cultures interact, how they are interwoven, and how they are dependent upon each other. This volume uses international case studies to explore the politics of globalization, looking at new paternalistic forms of exchange and the new inequalities emerging from it. These case studies are guided by the principle that processes of interweaving performance cultures are, in fact, political processes. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The dissertation aims to explore the intersection between the artistic performance of blackness in contemporary Italian theater and the country’s social stigmatization of black immigrants as a problem or national emergency. The author uses performance as a methodology and category to analyze the world and individuate viable alternatives to Italy’s (un)welcoming reaction to African immigrants. The author follows the work of the Afro-Romagnole ensemble Teatro delle Albe. The value of Teatro delle Albe stems from its ability to celebrate hybrid pluralism as a contribution to the notion of national identity, rather than its destruction, as long as it is grounded in local and historical understanding. (provided by the author – at the link above)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cleveland, Ohio became an increasingly important destination for European immigrants and African American migrants from the rural South. In this dissertation, the author examines Cleveland’s diasporic music theater traditions — namely German, Yiddish, African American, and Slovenian — and their connection to issues of ethnicity and immigration. Despite having different languages, stagings, and meanings, all of these groups were working toward shared underlying goals and their efforts were all carried out on the musical stage. (by the author – at the link above)

In the book the author lays out the geography, history, and primary theories of intercultural theatre. His central argument, that intercultural theatre must resist Western framing and be studied and practiced outside the perspective of Western egocentricity, enlists the theories of Bhabha, Balme, Lo, Gilbert, and Bharucha. Knowles clarifies terms such as transcultural, intracultural, multicultural, and cross-cultural, and—although he does not refer to it—a strength of this volume is his years as a player in the field, especially as a dramaturge, among intercultural theatres across Canada; his performance ecologies provide snapshot case studies of ethical theatre making in the multicultural city of Toronto, where dozens of diasporas intersect. Reaffirming that “intercultural performance has the potential to bring into being not merely new aesthetic forms but new social formations, new diasporic, hybrid, and intercultural social identities”, Knowles encourages us to reconsider the “standard” practice of reading the material theatre through an exclusively Western gaze. (from the review – Capraru, J. H., & Knowles, R. (2012). Theatre & Interculturalism. Theatre Survey, 53(2), 343-345. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557412000282 )

This book explores how Toronto stages diversity through its many intercultural theater companies and troupes. The book begins with a theoretical introduction to theatrical interculturalism. Subsequent chapters outline the historical and political context within which intercultural performance takes place; examine the ways in which Indigenous, Filipino, and Afro-Caribbean Canadian theater has developed play structures based on culturally specific forms of expression; and explore the ways that intercultural companies have used intermediality, modernist form, and intercultural discourse to mediate across cultures. This study will appeal to scholars, artists, and the theater-going public, including those in theater and performance studies, critical multiculturalism studies, diaspora studies, etc. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The essays in this volume map the history of “ethnic” and “multicultural” theatre in Canada, revealing the progression of minoritized performance from relegated “amateur status” to a position of prominence on the Canadian stage. The editors contextualize the changing face of “multicultural” theatre as it exists within the fraught space of Canadian nationhood, pointing to the importance of “intercultural” performance as a mechanism of national cohesion. The “ethnic” struggle for space in the realm of professional Canadian theatre illuminated, the essays contend with the question of represented identity in theatre, including concerns about the perpetuation of stereotypes.  Also the function of “cultural memory” in theatre, is explored, noting that “memory is performative” and “all cultural memory bridges difference.” Ultimately, this volume provides a relevant and timely contribution to the body of literature pertaining to “ethnic” theatre in Canada. (from the review – https://canlit.ca/article/representing-culture-in-canadian-theatre/ )

  • Kostiainen, A. (2014). Finns in the United States: A History of Settlement, Dissent, and Integration. (1st ed.). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/28710

The many-sided and rich cultural pursuits and interests such as arts, theater, music, schooling, and sports played a central role in the process of Finnish immigrant adaptation to the new society in the United States and Canada. A close look at the development of such pursuits, and at variations in the levels of activity, can help us to interpret the process whereby immigrants, and their descendants, became integrated and adapted to their new life circumstances. At the same time, it also casts light upon the persistence and preservation of Finnishness in this new context. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book explores ground-breaking new directions and critical discourse in the field of intercultural theatre and performance while surveying key debates concerning interculturalism as an aesthetic and ethical series of encounters in theatre and performance from the 1960s onwards. The handbook’s global coverage challenges understandings of intercultural theatre and performance that continue to prioritise case studies emerging primarily from the West and executed by elite artists. The volume offers an alternative and multi-vocal view of what interculturalism might offer as a theoretical keyword to the future of theatre and performance studies, while also contributing an energized reassessment of the vociferous debates that have long accompanied its critical and practical usage in a performance context. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book is a fairly in-depth analysis of the theater scene in Ireland, and of particular interest to researchers of migration and performance arts may be the practices of three migrant-led companies: Arambe Productions, Camino Productions and Polish Theatre Ireland described in the book. McIvor concentrates on the nearly systematic appearance of two prominent figures of the migrant on Irish stages: the migrant as an asylum seeker/refugee and the migrant as a woman. By exploring various examples of community theatre as well as the deployment of intercultural projects found in numerous festivals, the author dissects how intercultural community art projects offer participation through the arts as ‘a mode of active citizenship that at the very least introduces temporary experiences of cultural belonging’. (from the review – https://web-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=5d2f0464-bd85-4e24-a709-c951c2779a9c%40redis )

This article examines the relationship among migration, performance an intercultural dialogue as social policy in the European Union since the late 2000s. Intercultural dialogue is currently enjoying a second wave of prominence with several recently published reports by the European Union explicitly highlighting the relationship between this strategy’s transformational possibilities and the role of the arts. Crucially, in both European social policy and performance theory today, interculturalism is increasingly used to mean an embodied practice and site of encounter that strategically multiplies – rather than binarizing or reifying – cultural differences between individuals and within groups. This article compares the work of three European theatre companies who describe their work as theatrical interculturalism and use it as a means of practising and furthering intercultural dialogue: Kloppend Hert (Belgium), Terra Nova Productions (Northern Ireland) and Outlandish Theatre Platform (Republic of Ireland). (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book is the first edited collection to respond to an undeniable resurgence of critical activity around the controversial theoretical term ‘interculturalism’ in theatre and performance studies. Long one of the field’s most vigorously debated concepts, intercultural performance has typically referred to the hybrid mixture of performance forms from different cultures (typically divided along an East-West or North-South axis) and its related practices frequently charged with appropriation, exploitation or ill-founded universalism. The collection offers case studies from Asia, Africa, Australasia, Latin America, North America, and Western Europe which debate the possibilities and limitations of this theoretical turn towards a ‘new’ interculturalism. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)   

Through seven key case studies from Khan’s oeuvre, this book demonstrates how Akram Khan’s ‘new interculturalism’ is a challenge to the 1980s western ‘intercultural theatre’ project, as a more nuanced and embodied approach to representing Othernesses, from his own position of the Other. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Benjamin Nickl examines through the social pragmatics of humour the dynamics in the still-evolving popular culture space of German mainstream humour in the 21st century. The first book-length study on the topic to combine close readings of film, television, literary and online comedy, and transnational culture studies, Turkish German Muslims and Comedy Entertainment presents the argument that Turkish German humour has moved from margin to mainstream by intervening in cultural incompatibility and Islamophobia discourse. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This book opens up a new world of technique for performers. It provides: a guide to the physical, vocal and improvisational dynamics of non-Western performance’ a new vocabulary with which to interpret plays from around the globe; games to use for exploring rhythm, movement, balance, tension and gesture, breathwork, stylisation, and the use of the voice. A practical, hands-on approach to creating vibrant theatrical work. Studies on intercultural performance are usually written by scholars and researchers. John Martin explains the definition and development of intercultural performance from the perspective of an experienced practitioner. He provides exercises, practical advice, and a clear training process for the inquiring actor or director. The book is a process of discovery, carefully written so as to develop understanding and move towards empowerment for the adventurous theatre-maker. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

In this article, and specifically its 3rd part called “Mobility and migration”, the author is looking at performance arts from new angles, associated with performance and identity (particularly interculturalism), migratory mobilities, and geopolitics. When considering mobility and the performing arts, dance is the most prominent medium that was analysed, using its specific modes of expression to explore the ontology of moving bodies because it traverses the representational and the non-representational, movement and stillness, thinking and feeling, and different rhythms, temporalities and histories.

This chapter seeks a deeper understanding of the encounters and exchanges between Africa and Harlem by employing cinema, the arts, and literature to glean insights into larger trends. The Black Renaissance underway—with its ongoing conversation with Africa—is not happening predominantly in literature as it did during the original Harlem Renaissance movement. Instead, today’s ever-growing African presence and influence on the cultural scene in Harlem encompasses stage productions, film, music, photography, and other arts side-by-side with literature. (provided by the publisher)

In this article the author shares her experience of working with a group of young people who came together from all over the world to share their experiences of transition through the use of comedic theatre techniques. Through developing and performing a piece of physical comedy to an audience at the theatre, not only have the young people built confidence in sharing with others through creative expression; they have also connected to other people and themselves in a way which means many more doors can open for them.

In “Making Theatre Around the World, and What It Has Taught Me,” the actor/director Avra Sidiropoulou recounts her varied experiences with production around the world that celebrated her convictions about the theatre’s political significance and the ways theatre can recognize various cultures, bring together actors from different backgrounds, and adjust to local conditions and challenges. Uniting and transcending differences among people, she describes herself as “rewarded with the opportunity to inspire, to move, and, ultimately, to transform.” (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The Celtic Tiger era witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of transnational migrants entering Ireland. By the 2011 Census, 17% of the population was born outside Ireland and much of what had been assumed about Irish identity (and theatre) could no longer hold. This groundbreaking anthology brings together six interviews and eight plays by migrant and Irish-born theatre artists who probe the impact of inward-migration and interculturalism in post-1990s Ireland. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The first chapter of this book introduces the theories and schools of Intercultural Theatres. Experiencing the development and evolution of Multicultural theatre, Cultural collage, Syncretic theatre, Post-colonial theatre, and the “Theatre of the Fourth world, ” like Mikhailovich Bakhtin proclaims the theory of “heteroglossia,” in the multiple and polyphonic voices of theories in each theoretical school, Intercultural Theatre establishes its own theory and interpretation on the various performance experiments and practices in the current theatres facing the cultural exchange between East and West. From Chapter 2 to Chapter 6, there are the comments on the intercultural theatre performances by applying Interculturalism to the interpretation of seven intercultural performances. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Multiculturalism

Cuban migration to Europe and America (North, Central and South) has designed a creative and pedagogical map that expands its original theatrical geography into the new “lived spaces” – sometimes these being bilingual spaces. In the last fifty years Cuban migrants have processed their journeys of displacement by recovering their own cultural History through the generation of new Imaginaries and Institutions, creating in consequence new aesthetic scenarios articulated by a “frontal discourse” or a “rhetorical tissue” (Azor). These new aesthetic scenarios reveal the multicultural dialogue of a transcending “cubanidad”. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This chapter considers the forms that Chicana/o and Latina/o studies have taken in Mexico. It also considers its history and development, as well as what can be called: Chicana and Latina interventions in the academic, artistic, literary, and cultural spheres of Mexico. The translation of Sandra Cisneros’ novel The House on Mango Street in 1994 by Elena Poniatowska represented a watershed in the reception and recognition of Chicana literature in Mexico. Experience in Mexico shows that, rather than talking about the incorporation of Chicanos/Latinos in the context of “studies,” what has been more effective in the Mexican national context and as an actual strategy to reach classrooms and research is the presence of specific authors and their theoretical and conceptual propositions in the curriculum. Feminists, theorists, and writers Norma Alarcon, Norma Klhan, Chela Sandoval, Gloria Anzaldua and Sandra Cisneros are beginning to be read in Mexican classrooms as part of a complex and powerful cultural theory that transcends borders. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

Emphasizing the resilience of theatre arts in the midst of significant political change, this book spotlights the emergence of new performance styles in the wake of collapsed political systems. Centering on theatrical works from the late nineteenth century to the present, twelve original essays written by prominent theatre scholars showcase the development of new work after social revolutions, independence campaigns, the overthrow of monarchies, and world wars. Global in scope, this book features performances occurring across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The essays attend a range of live events—theatre, dance, and performance art—that stage subaltern experiences and reveal societies in the midst of cultural, political, and geographic transition. This collection is an engaging resource for students and scholars of theatre and performance; world history; and those interested in postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and transnationalism. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This chapter discusses multiculturalism in theatre, covering the tendencies in the US. The special attention is devoted to the notion of the “Negro theatre”.

This book focuses on a body of performance work, the work of Magnet Theatre in particular but also work by other artists in Cape Town and other parts of the continent or the world, that engages with the Cape as a real or imagined node in a complex system of migration and mobility. The performance works studied in the book attempt to get to grips with what it feels like to be on the move and in the spaces in-between that characterises the lives, now and for centuries before, of multiple peoples who move around and pass through places like the Cape. The contributors are a broad range of mostly African authors from various parts of the continent and as such the book offers an insight into new thinking and new approaches from an emerging and important location. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

With a premier performance of Giden Tez Geri Dönmez (Those who leave do not easily return) on June 15, 1980, the Turkish Ensemble became the first Turkish theatre to appear in a major West German theatre. This essay analyzes the early projects of the ensemble, including the Turkenprojekt (Turkish project), Giden Tez Geri Dönmez, and Keşanlı Ali Destanı (The ballad of Ali from Keshan), to show how the ensemble shifted from an attempt to develop a complex theatre dealing with the reality of migrants in West Germany to the performance of Turkish culture for German and Turkish audiences. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The essays in this volume map the history of “ethnic” and “multicultural” theatre in Canada, revealing the progression of minoritized performance from relegated “amateur status” to a position of prominence on the Canadian stage. The editors contextualize the changing face of “multicultural” theatre as it exists within the fraught space of Canadian nationhood, pointing to the importance of “intercultural” performance as a mechanism of national cohesion. The “ethnic” struggle for space in the realm of professional Canadian theatre illuminated, the essays contend with the question of represented identity in theatre, including concerns about the perpetuation of stereotypes.  Also the function of “cultural memory” in theatre, is explored, noting that “memory is performative” and “all cultural memory bridges difference.” Ultimately, this volume provides a relevant and timely contribution to the body of literature pertaining to “ethnic” theatre in Canada. (from the review – https://canlit.ca/article/representing-culture-in-canadian-theatre/ )

This book examines writing, performing, building, and urban spatial practices and their agents, whose cosmopolitan diversity and capacity for invention challenge the normativity of modernity in the global north. It begins with the Empire Exhibition of 1936, and moves on to explore artistic creative responses to the rise of apartheid particularly in Sophiatown around 1956; poetry and performance around the Soweto uprising of 1976, and fictional and visual responses to the crime and disorder of 1996. It considers urban spatial practices including class and racial conflict and the treatment of migrants and other foreigners, as well as the imagination and practice of hospitality. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This article theorises how Akira Takayama with his theatre company Port B facilitates large-scale multi-sited performance works in cities across the globe, which expand the physical architecture of the theatre and utilise digital communications technology. To probe the relation between theatre and the contemporary city, the article interrogates what Takayama calls ‘theatre 2.0’. Drawing on interpersonal exchange with the artist and the notion of ‘quiet politics’ (Askin 2015), the article argues that Takayama’s theatre 2.0 forges urban interstices for quiet and tender migratory encounters within an otherwise violent geopolitical sphere of asylum, forced displacement and oppressive border regimes. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Minvielle, R. (2015). L’Amérique du Sud ou l’émergence d’un nouveau théâtre des migrations africaines. Africa Development / Afrique et Développement, 40(1), 19–39. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/afrdevafrdev.40.1.19

The migration of Africans to Latin American countries has become a new trend in the migration pattern of Africans. From the 1990s, and especially since the 2000s, migrants, mainly from West Africa, have found a new migratory route in which Brazil and Argentina are the preferred destinations. These new routes are being explored not just as a response to the stern immigration policies of countries in the North but also because of the economic opportunities, favourable conditions and histories of groups and individuals. While the vast majority engage in street trading, driven in particular by the Senegalese Mourid community, others seek to make their mark in football and business. (from the abstract)

The Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance traces how manifestations of Latine self-determination in contemporary U.S. theatre and performance practices affirm the value of Latine life in a theatrical culture that constantly and consciously strives to undermine it. This collection draws on fifty interdisciplinary contributions written by some of the leading Latine theatre and performance scholars and practitioners in the U.S. The project reveals the continued growth of Latine theatre and performance, through essays covering, but not limited to playwriting, casting practices, representation, training, wrestling with anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity, theatre for young audiences, community empowerment, and the market forces that govern the U.S. theatre industry. This book enters conversations in performance studies, ethnic studies, American studies, and Latina/e/o/x studies by taking up performance scholar Diana Taylor’s call to consider the ways that “embodied and performed acts generate, record, and transmit knowledge.” This collection is an essential resource for students, scholars and theatremakers seeking to explore, understand and further the huge range and significance of Latine performance. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

The purpose of this work is to provide a history of Arab American identity formation, specifically its transformation from the emergence of a sense of political identity in the late 1960s to the post-9/11 decade, and to analyze how Arab Americans during these periods addressed issues of discrimination and persecution through performance. In constructing this history, the author refers to the academic works of early Arab American scholars/activists and the creative works of contemporary Arab American writers and performers. In addition, the author draws upon key analytical concepts from Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s theory of racial formation; Judith Butler’s work on derealization, mourning, and violence; Amir Marvasti and Karyn D. McKinney’s conceptualizations of coping/resistance strategies; and Edward W. Said’s work on racial antipathy, media studies, and representation. (from the dissertation)

This book investigates how migration has shaped and is reflected in Irish culture today; more specifically, it focuses on the representation of outsiders in Irish theatre and to the way in which theatre practitioners have dealt and engaged with debates of national and cultural identities, hybridity, multiculturalism and racism in post-nationalist Ireland up to 2008 – that is prior to the economic crisis that has swept the whole continent of Europe and the US over the past two years. Although multiculturalism has become an almost jaded theme in academia, much of the material presented here is fresh, original and highly relevant. Some plays are relatively unknown, and many of the texts remain unpublished. They have been staged on a small number of occasions, yet the topics they explore are central, not just to Irish society, but to any community in a global context that hosts immigrants. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

During the past thirty years Latin American theatre has emerged as one of the most dynamic, activist, and politically committed theatres of modern times. As a consequence of massive migration from Latin America to the United States, many practices in the Latin American theatre have been transplanted to this country in order to fulfill the cultural needs of immigrant groups. An example of this phenomenon is clearly seen in the Puerto Rican theatre produced in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century. A group that is presently focusing its work on these same goals from both social and political perspectives is Teatro Pregones. This dissertation is a case study which analyses the presence and the work of Teatro Pregones in the United States during the years 1979 to 1993. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

This chapter appeals to critical ethnography to focus on collaborative creative practices across cultural and linguistic differences within an intercultural theatre group in the city of Bologna (Italy). Alongside the regular Company formed of members from a range of countries, the group organises a series of open workshops aimed at migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and Italians resident in the city. Both the Company and their workshops thus involve participants with hugely diverse linguistic and cultural repertoires, reflecting distinct individual trajectories of migration and mobility. Bridging sociolinguistics and cultural studies, the chapter thus addresses the creativity and transformative potential of translanguaging practices within spaces of cultural production and exchange. (by the publisher – at the link above)

  • Ybarra, P.A. (2017). Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism. (1 ed.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/55917

Latinx Theater in the Times of Neoliberalism traces how Latinx theater in the United States has engaged with the policies, procedures, and outcomes of neoliberal economics in the Americas from the 1970s to the present. Ybarra analyzes the work of playwrights María Irene Fornés, Cherríe Moraga, Michael John Garcés, Caridad Svich, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Victor Cazares, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Tanya Saracho, and Octavio Solis. In addressing histories of oppression in their home countries, these playwrights have newly imagined affective political and economic ties in the Americas. They also have rethought the hallmark movements of Latin politics in the United States—cultural nationalism, third world solidarity, multiculturalism—and their many discontents. (provided by the publisher – at the link above)

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