Refugee theatre

Starting from the notion of 'post-democracy' elaborated by Colin Crouch, which indicates an increasing tendency towards the deterioration of democratic principles and the narrowing of the public sphere, this book explores how, in the Dutch context, this process is influenced by theatre and performance practice, art policy and governmental action. It points out that, within discourses of post-democracy, aspects of depoliticisation are commonly assessed through theatrical concepts such as spectacle, play, game and theatre. At the same time, this work argues by an analysis of three performances, 'Wijksafari Utrecht' by Adelheid Roosen, a political protest by Quinsy Gario, and 'Labyrinth' by the refugee group 'We are Here Cooperative', that there might be a role for theatre in this age of depoliticisation. It proposes to scrutinise, based on the writings of Samuel Weber, a paradox of theatre. Namely, while concepts of theatre are applied to convey disapproval of government and politics, theatre has a possible emancipatory character to dispute the given order.

„Der Schauspieler“, so formulierte es der philosophische Anthropologe Helmuth Plessner in seinem Aufsatz Zur Anthropologie des Schauspie- lers, „stellt Menschen dar“. Als ein „Verhältnis seiner selbst zu sich selbst“ beschreibt Plessner die dem Theater als Kunstform eigene Situation des Schauspielers, zugleich Subjekt und Objekt seiner Arbeit zu sein: „Ein Mensch verkörpert einen anderen. Nirgends sonst wird uns das gezeigt." Plessners Formulierung ist eine anthropologisch bemerkenswerte Beobachtung zur theatralen Subjektivierung von Schauspielenden durch sich selbst, weist jedoch auch auf interessante Problemstellungen für ein Theater hin, das sich der Selbstdarstellung und der Darstellung von authentischen Schicksalen und Lebenswelten widmet, etwa von Minderheiten und Geflüchteten. Jérôme Bels Produktion Disabled Theatre mit dem Theater HORA – das sich selbst als das „einzige professionelle Theater der Schweiz, dessen Ensemblemitglieder alle eine [...] ‚geistige Behinderung‘ haben“, bezeichnet – verwischt beispielsweise bewusst die Grenzen zwischen ‚Authentizität‘ und Rollenspiel, indem Schauspielende dezidiert dazu aufgefordert werden, ‚sich selbst darzustellen‘. Solche theatralen Praktiken, die sich der Selbstdarstellung von Menschen widmen, werfen hier gerade deshalb interessante Fragen auf, da es sich eben nicht wie nach Plessner um die Verkörperung von einem Menschen durch einen ‚anderen‘ handelt, sondern um Menschen, die sich selbst darstellen. Wer verkörpert hier wen oder wessen Idee, wenn ‚man selbst‘ oder ‚das Selbst‘ auf der Bühne zum Auftritt eingeladen wird? Welche Formen der Subjektivierung und Rahmungen von Selbstdarstellungen kommen hier zum Vorschein?

We are the Persians! was a contemporary adaptation of Aeschylus's The Persians presented in June 2015 at the Athens and Epidaurus Festival. Performed by displaced people from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and directed by Yolanda Markopoulou, the piece grew out of the Station Athens group's five-year theatre workshops. Extracts from the original play were intertwined with performative material brought to the project by the participants: from real-life testimonies to vocal improvisations, poems, and songs in different languages. Highlighting the historical thematic of the play, this adaptation was presented as a documentary theatre piece, and the participants as 'modern-day heralds' who provided on stage 'shocking accounts' concerning 'contemporary wars' (programme notes, 2015). After briefly revisiting the main body of literature on the voice of lament in ancient drama and in Aeschylus's The Persians in particular, but also after discussing the recent stage history of the play in Greece, I conduct a close reading of this adaptation. Based on semi-directed interviews and audiovisual archives from both the rehearsals and the final show,

The Good Chance Theatre is a network of international artistes operating in the refugees’ camps and in the Reception Centres for Migrants. In these sorts of laboratories of cosmopolitanism where people from various origins share the ultimate desire to become Europeans, Good Chance Theatre establishes his mobile theatres (geodesic domes) and tries to develop a common language and a shared imagination, using performing arts. Founded in 2015, in the unofficial Calais camp, the Good Chance has developed a network of domes in France and in Great Britain, aiming to increase those spaces of experimentation, where the performative language challenges multiple identities in transition. Hundreds of refugees, artists and volunteers work together daily, to connect peoples, bodies, ideas and narratives. By working at the thresholds of Europe, where new identities are rebuilt or denied, Good Chance Theatre benefits of a privileged viewpoint to look at the continent and foresee its changes.

This chapter is based on Georgiou’s professional engagement as dramaturge in two projects organized between 2016 and 2017 by Germany’s Baal Novo Theater. Michalis shows how applied theatre where refugees share narratives creates a community with the audience in order to revise given perceptions. The project Afrika! raises a debate about nationality and citizenship that fosters intercultural dialogue, while in the second project, In the Waiting Room of the Dreams, the rehearsal process becomes a continual work-in-progress adapted to the interests of refugees, resulting in discussions of the sociopolitical and aesthetic relationship at its heart.

This conversation traces the creation of Todos Festival, one of the most important international socially engaged multi-arts festivals in Southern Europe. In dialogue with artistic director, Madalena Victorino, the festival will be portrayed as a space for encounter and performative exploration of difference, linking marginalised migrant and minority communities to Lisbon’s theatre scape and cultural ecology. We discuss modalities of transfiguring difficult (local) realities into performance on the interface between centres and peripheries.

Shakespeare has often offered orientation and even emotional refuge both to people in crisis and to those contemplating it. Shakespeare has also been performed by and for refugees. The Western canon has been given various forms of moral authority, including the authority to address crisis. Shakespeare in particular has been deployed for socially and politically reparative purposes. The efficacy of the purported reparation differs among these performances. As empowering and positive as these productions and academic initiatives can be, our present volume considers the moment dialectically, including the less comfortable question of whether some of these "reparative" projects for refugees might unconsciously exploit the refugee crisis as a trendy topic to serve mere palliation or even academic advancement rather than communities in need. :::: Parallel, political uses of Shakespeare for socially progressive causes have also emerged in Latin America, which is why the present volume features a second thematic section, edited by Tom Bishop and Alexa Alice Joubin. The five articles in our special section take the pulse of the vibrant artistic and scholarly creativity in the field since that time by examining the presence of Shakespeare variously on page and stage in Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Colombia, and the Caribbean. :::: The two sections on refuge and on Latin America speak to each other in their nuanced reframing of concepts such as the local and the global as well as antipathy and political uses of Shakespeare. An ethical concern around “outsourcing” social work to Shakespeare also informs both sections, raising questions about the use of canonical texts as much to reassure the privileged as to advance the interest of the oppressed. ::: https://www.routledge.com/The-Shakespearean-International-Yearbook-19-Special-Section-Shakespeare/Bishop-Joubin/p/book/9781032130385