In this essay, we critically reflect upon the ephemeral nature of theatre. Such a reflection becomes particularly important in participatory refugee theatre, since the process of participants' bearing witness to experiences of trauma and violence is emphasised as the core impetus. To this end, we investigate the experiences of Syrian young adults…

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…

This article reflects on the ethics and process of writing and performing the play "This Is Us" with a group of rejected asylum seekers from Deportation Centre Sjaelsmark in Denmark. Positioned within larger frameworks of political and media hostility, the group pushed for a more radical approach of 'not just theatre', but called instead…

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…

As youth media creation programmes proliferate, educators and practitioners are learning how to develop stories that interrupt hegemony and point to new ways of being. This research, carried out in an ethnically diverse middle school, highlights the way digital storytelling as an applied theatre praxis brought complexity to student work. The role…

In order to claim asylum in the UK, lesbians and gay men are required to 'prove' their sexual orientation during an interview, demonstrating the dangers that their sexuality poses for them in their countries of origin. Playwrights who create verbatim theatre addressing LGBTI asylum issues will also interview contributors eliciting personal…

As neoliberalism infiltrates the foundations of education and arts-based practices, the authors of this article propose an applied theatre approach, based on the celebration of people who feel marginalised, to defy the notions of individualistic, self-centred, and out-put oriented goals that impact how students engage with and view the arts in…

This article argues that in a society transformed by an increasing bureaucratic nexus of migration, artistic responses to political crises are particularly effective when working with institutions. To probe the prevalent discourse on the efficacy of performance art, the article interrogates "Grandhotel Cosmopolis" through a lens of…

Focusing on examples from theatre ("On the Move" festival, London International Festival of Theatre/Royal Court Theatre, London 2016), film (Gianfranco Rosi's "Fuoccoamare," 2016) and the visual arts (Ai Weiwei's "Safe Passage," Berlin 2016), this article proposes that in order to think through questions of efficacy…

This paper documents the drawings, installations, video works, and performances that were produced as part of Bryan McCormack's "Yesterday/Today/Tomorrow" ("Traceability is Credibility") conceptual work at the 2017 Venice Biennale in collaboration with Henry Bell and undergraduate students at Sheffield Hallam University. It…

Certain repeated moral narratives support justifications for humanitarian interventions, and simultaneously inform perspectives of 'the figure of the refugee'. How does 'the humanitarian' appear in these narratives? How are the characters of 'the refugee' and 'the humanitarian' constructed in relation to one another? How does their interlinkage…

In this article, we question the unilateral discourse of benefit of participation in participatory refugee theatre in the context of a growing socio-political climate of polarisation and stigmatisation of refugees in European countries of resettlement. By integrating critical voices from the fields of applied theatre and refugee research, we…

Juliano Khamis was born in Nazareth to a Palestinian father and a Jewish mother who had lived in Jenin for many years and supported the Palestinian opposition to the Israeli occupation. Juliano's mother Arna Mer Khamis established Elhajar Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp in the Occupied West Bank with money awarded to her as winner of the Right…

An emphasis on personal narratives characterises a great deal of participatory theatre practice with refugee groups. It is important to understand how these narratives are conditioned by bureaucratic performance if practitioners are to avoid re-enactments of victimhood in participatory projects. Bureaucratic performance concerns the legal and…

This essay seeks to unpack some of the issues concerning representation when performing refugee stories using playback theatre. It questions the reductive influence of narrative structure and, using the framework of "artist as ethnographer," it argues that strong aesthetic production is required to overcome the dampening effect of empathy when…