Theatre and Migration

This journal issue looks at ethical positions and qualities in artistic processes and aesthetic modalities of migrant representation in contemporary theatre and performance in Europe and beyond. The journal issue is informed by the work of Migrant Dramaturgies Network, an international research network that explores emerging dramaturgies of theatrical responses to migration in light of recent migration and shifts in global politics and economics. MDNetwork aims to map new theatrical forms of migrant representation and identify their impacts on national theatre cultures in shaping the perception of non-European migrants and migrant cultures.

https://www.intellectbooks.com/performing-ethos-international-journal-of-ethics-in-theatre-performance

Nach Hans-Thies Lehmann kann postdramatisches Theater als eine Konzeptualisierung von Kunst nicht als Repräsentation, sondern als Erfahrung des Realen (Zeit, Raum, Körper) verstanden werden (Lehmann: Postdramatisches Theater, 1999, S. 241ff). Außerdem weisen die Körperzentriertheit und die performativen Verflechtungen von Ritual-(Theater)Kunst-Realität in postdramatischen Formen stark auf ältere bzw. außereuropäische performative/rituelle Theaterformen hin. In diesem Zusammenhang schlägt Lehmann in Pia Janke / Teresa Kovacs (Hg.): „Postdramatik“. Reflexion und Revision eine „stärker transkulturell orientierte Betrachtungsweise“ vor. Er betont, dass „das dramatische Theater Europas eine Sonderentwicklung“ sei, weshalb ihm „die Relativierung des spezifisch europäischen Theatermodells durch transkulturell orientierte Forschung überaus wichtig“ erscheine (Janke / Kovacs, 2015, S. 45). Die Tagung eruiert die ästhetische und wissenschaftliche Reichweite dieser Sachlage.

Vor dem Hintergrund gegenwärtiger Migrationsbewegungen nimmt dieses interdisziplinäre Symposium, das wissenschaftliche Perspektiven, NGO-Vertreterinnen und -Vertreter sowie Kunstschaffende zusammenbringt, Erfahrungen von Fremdheit und Grenzvorstellungen in den Blick.
An der Erfahrung ‚des Fremden‘, das einem laut dem Theaterwissenschaftler Günther Heeg nicht in fernen Ländern und Kulturen begegnet, sondern im Inneren der vermeintlichen Eigenen, entzünden sich transkulturelle Theater­praktiken. Wird demnach unter einer Grenze die durch eine Trennlinie oder eine Trennfläche ermittelte Abgrenzung zwischen Fremdem und Eigenem verstanden, so vermittelt die Idee einer Grenze nicht nur die Begrenzung und den Schutz von Räumen (vor Fremden). Zugleich weisen bestimmte Verhaltensformen von Menschen Grenzen auf. Bezogen auf Migrationsphänomene macht das Grenzverständnis aus allen Menschen Fliehende: Während die einen vor unerträglichen Lebensumständen in ihren Herkunftsorten fliehen und geographische Grenzen überschreiten, fliehen die anderen vor den Grenzen eigener Verantwortung und Handlungsmöglichkeit. Aufgrund der gegenwärtig rasant wachsenden Migrationsbewegungen sowie der damit einhergehenden Fremdheitserfahrung weist somit das jeweilige Verständnis von Grenzen und Fliehenden eine Doppelartikulation auf, die dieses interdisziplinäre Symposium in den Mittelpunkt rückt.

The open-ended durational performance The Foreigner is a personal response to the migration question currently involving Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The work explores and questions notions of identity and territoriality, reality and virtuality, through the anonymity and vulnerability of the artist, and the active participation of the audience in the performance process. The artist’s body worked as a mirror that reflected personal ideas, constructs, and emotions of the visitors, who experience and interpret the image of the Foreigner according to their personal histories and past experiences. The result is a multiplicity of perspectives on migration and beyond.
KEYWORDS: migration, performance art, identity, vulnerability, participation.

Prompted by recurring nationalist appropriations of the term Heimat and its enduring colonial connotations in the German context, we felt the urge to reopen the notion, to trouble it collectively, to shift its meaning beyond singular interpretations. Beyond Heimat, in this case: PostHeimat, does not mean abandoning the possibility of connecting to the term, but going through it, across it, and to find other and new meanings that signal a pluralistic re-appropriation of the notion. PostHeimat, then, is a departure point to reflect on concepts like identity-formation, nation, racism, and colonialism, and to move to an understanding of home that is non-discriminatory , does not equate nation with ethnicity or language, and deeply recognises a post-migrant social theory. PostHeimat becoming points towards an emergent and as of yet incomplete idea. It stands for a heterogeneous process that resists forming a new canon, a new Leitkultur. PostHeimat proposes itself more as a conversation, one that does not shy away from admitting less uttered experiences. In doing so, it seeks to form part of a critical social imagination, a new ethics for a diverse commons.

This statement was drafted by the research group of the PostHeimat network during and after Encounter #04 at the Maxim Gorki Theater in March 2020.

https://www.postheimat.com/research-en/

Articoli, codice etico, revisori e guida per gli autori sul sito: http://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.it Articles, ethical statement, reviewers, authors guidelines: http://comunicazionisociali.vitaepensiero.com Dall'annata 2009, «Comunicazioni Sociali» ha adottato il sistema di double blind peer review La rivista è in fascia A Anvur per le aree L-ART/05, L-ART/06, SPS/08 Pubblicata con il supporto del Dipartimento di Scienze della Comunicazione e dello Spettacolo e dell'Alta Scuola in Media Comunicazione e Spettacolo, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore / Published with the support of the

In the summer of 2017, Szabolcs Musca and Graça P. Corrêa followed the production process of Passajar, an immersive participatory theatre project collaboratively created by four theatre-makers and refugees from Congo, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Zimbabwe. Developed under the curatorship of Portuguese choreographer Madalena Victorino for Festival Todos in Lisbon, this multilingual experimental work focused on representing migrant experiences through a postdramatic artistic gaze. The production refused the forms of testimonial theatre and with it the contradictory role of facilitators, opting instead for a multidimensional fictional aesthetics practice. In this article the authors explore how Passajar performance and dramaturgical processes address difference in actual creative practice; and what are the ‘refugeedom’ aesthetics and ethical affects being generated by working with refugee participants. Similar to a growing number of non-verbatim migrant theatre initiatives, Passajar switched from the real to the fictitious via non-realistic representations and processes of abstraction. Arguably, this practice went against victimhood narratives, but does suspending traditional means of identification and empathy help develop new understandings on migration, or, on the contrary create detachment in audiences? What are the ethical consequences to audiences and refugee participants alike? Drawing upon philosophical concepts by Henri Bergson, Baruch Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze, the article examines how they critically contribute towards a discussion of the dramaturgies of alterity and empathy that were deployed in Passajar. By reflecting on both rehearsal process and final production, it reveals the ethical affects of Passajar, as well as transformative alternatives for migrant representation beyond the stage.

Migration has been a phenomenon throughout human history. However, as a result of economic hardship, conflict and globalization, the number of people now living outside their country of birth is higher than ever. It has also become a key focul point for the media. Even though irregular immigration constitutes only a minor part of the total immigrant population in the EU, it is the one most spectacularized by the media. This over-mediatization of the phenomenon leads to a consistent discrepancy between the perception and the reality of the issue, and this distance has favored the shift of migration issues from 'low politics' to 'high politics', fueling an emergency management and a securitarian approach. We live in a deeply mediatized world. Media have an important role in influencing political attitudes and in framing public debates towards migration and asylum. In the last decade, the representation strategies and discursive practices enacted by a wide range of state and non-state actors have been presenting irregular migrants crossing borders as an 'emergency' to be managed in terms of a wider social, cultural and political 'crisis'. These media representations have outstripped the reality of the crisis. As a consequence, the public anxiety about migration and asylum-seeking in Europe, is increasingly shaped by the political rhetoric of Europe as being besieged by people fleeing conflict or seeking a better life. Institutional and political actors have stoked public anxieties and security concerns, endorsing emergency narratives, aggressive policing and militarized border control, which in turn has generated a fertile breeding ground for xenophobic, populist reactions. On the other side, it is now widely recognized that culture, media and the arts have been transformed by migration and mobility. These recent cultural and aesthetic transformations have offered another way of seeing identity, politics and society. The EU Member States and the EU itself, have been summoned to meet these challenges. There has been growing recognition of the ways in which media, the arts and performative practices are able to facilitate intercultural dialogue among migrant and host communities-thereby empowering their participation in social life-, and to promote an understanding of the affirmative role of cultural diversity (different ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds and heritage) within European societies, and also of the need to question the boundedness of identities and cultures. These critical processes lead us to address the possibilities of a transcultural dialogue-one that opens up the ideas of belonging and sets up new positions for speaking that do not intersect with ethnic and national identities. Media, performing arts and culture can foster innovative practical actions, and also alternative imaginaries on social phenomenon and spaces of collective participation. Indeed, different "liberal" and "applied" arts (film, theatre & performance, photography, crafts, architecture, design, etc.) as well as emerging cross-media forms (interactive and social media, games, street art, circus and performative practices, etc.), have a pivotal role to play in this direction. Despite this high potential for opening up new perspectives the policies in the EU are caught in old traps: national cultural policies affect cultural productions by institutionalizing the process of othering through rhetorical discourses and hegemonic representations; the projects and practices in this field are often vital but fragmented and contained within specific areas and territories; the skills and professional figures associated with these processes are poorly defined and have no particular training centres; and finally, the evaluation methods of the initiatives are variable and lack consistent protocols. The combination of all these factors produces a fundamental weakness in a sector that in any case, remains extremely lively and promising.

This article is concerned with the European public theatre system’s relationship with migration. Focusing on the Portuguese theatre landscape and especially Lisbon, the essay will map some of the major issues regarding theatre and migration today, identifying both systemic failures and structural and aesthetic shifts in the public theatres’ engagement with migrant communities. Contemporary performative approaches will be surveyed with a special emphasis on initiatives that go against crisis narratives and position migration as a structural component of society rather than a temporary challenge. The article proposes a shift from aesthesized theatre practices towards activist aesthetics, a politically responsive, participatory and durational practice that would not only introduce counter narratives on migration, but it would be instrumental in re-thinking our national cultural, literary and theatrical canons.

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.

This journal issue looks at ethical positions and qualities in artistic processes and aesthetic modalities of migrant representation in contemporary theatre and performance in Europe and beyond. The journal issue is informed by the work of Migrant Dramaturgies Network, an international research network that explores emerging dramaturgies of theatrical responses to migration in light of recent migration and shifts in global politics and economics. MDNetwork aims to map new theatrical forms of migrant representation and identify their impacts on national theatre cultures in shaping the perception of non-European migrants and migrant cultures. https://www.intellectbooks.com/performing-ethos-international-journal-of-ethics-in-theatre-performance

This journal issue looks at ethical positions and qualities in artistic processes and aesthetic modalities of migrant representation in contemporary theatre and performance in Europe and beyond. The journal issue is informed by the work of Migrant Dramaturgies Network, an international research network that explores emerging dramaturgies of theatrical responses to migration in light of recent migration and shifts in global politics and economics. MDNetwork aims to map new theatrical forms of migrant representation and identify their impacts on national theatre cultures in shaping the perception of non-European migrants and migrant cultures. https://www.intellectbooks.com/performing-ethos-international-journal-of-ethics-in-theatre-performance

Migrant Dramaturgies Network is an international research network developed in partnership with New Tides Platform (UK) and the Centre for Theatre Research at the University of Lisbon, Portugal.

It is a platform for exchange and knowledge sharing between academics, theatre-makers and organisations involved in migrant theatre on various levels of artistic and cultural creation and development.

We aim to explore emerging dramaturgies of theatrical responses to migration in light of recent migration and shifts in global politics and economics. We wish to map new theatrical forms of migrant representation and identify their impacts on national theatre cultures in shaping the perception of non-European migrants and migrant cultures.

As a collaborative venture, we are planning to facilitate research meetings, workshops and various outreach programmes together with international partner organisations and theatre-makers in order to bring together academic and practitioners’ perspectives and expand understanding on migration and theatre.

https://migrantdramaturgies.tumblr.com/

In her book Theatre and Migration, Emma Cox observes how ‘migration is, at its heart, about encounters with foreignness—with foreign people, and with foreign places’ (Cox 2014: 3). Consequently, ‘theatre of migration pays attention to imagining the contact zone between those who arrive and those who lay claim to ownership or custodianship over a territory. But who does the imagining?’ (2014:4-5). Moreover, what are the ethics of such encounters and the dramaturgical politics of such imagining? This lecture wishes to map the interferences between ethical and creative/ aesthetic practices of staging and performing migration, refugeedom and asylum in a contemporary context. I will look at ethical positions and qualities in artistic processes and aesthetic modalities of migrant representation in contemporary theatre and performance in Europe and beyond.