Refugees, Theatre and Crisis: Performing Global Identities

210 Pages·2012·1.571 MB·English

by  Alison Jeffers (auth.)

Performance Interventions
Series Editors: Elaine Aston, University of Lancaster, and Bryan Reynolds,
University of California, Irvine
Performance Interventions is a series of monographs and essay collections on
theatre, performance, and visual culture that share an underlying commit-
ment to the radical and political potential of the arts in our contemporary
moment, or give consideration to performance and to visual culture from the
past deemed crucial to a social and political present. Performance Interventions
moves transversally across artistic and ideological boundaries to publish
work that promotes dialogue between practitioners and academics, and
interactions between performance communities, educational institutions,
and academic disciplines.
Titles include:
Alan Ackerman and Martin Puchner (editors)
AGAINST THEATRE
Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage
Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris (editors)
FEMINIST FUTURES?
Theatre, Performance, Theory
Maaike Bleeker
VISUALITY IN THE THEATRE
The Locus of Looking
Clare Finburgh and Carl Lavery (editors)
CONTEMPORARY FRENCH THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE
Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson (editors)
GET REAL: DOCUMENTARY THEATRE PAST AND PRESENT
James Frieze
NAMING THEATRE
Demonstrative Diagnosis in Performance
Lynette Goddard
STAGING BLACK FEMINISMS
Identity, Politics, Performance
Leslie Hill and Helen Paris (editors)
PERFORMANCE AND PLACE
D.J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr and Kim Solga (editors)
PERFORMANCE AND THE CITY
Amelia Howe Kritzer
POLITICAL THEATRE IN POST-THATCHER BRITAIN
New Writing: 1995–2005
Alison Jeffers
REFUGEES, THEATRE AND CRISIS
Performing Global Identities
Marcela Kostihová
SHAKESPEARE IN TRANSITION
Political Appropriations in the Post-Communist Czech Republic
Jon McKenzie, Heike Roms and C.J. W.-L. Wee (editors)
CONTESTING PERFORMANCE
Emerging Sites of Research
Jennifer Parker-Starbuck
CYBORG THEATRE
Corporeal/Technological Intersections in Multimedia Performance
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera and Harvey Young
PERFORMANCE IN THE BORDERLANDS
Mike Sell (editor)
AVANT-GARDE PERFORMANCE AND MATERIAL EXCHANGE
Vectors of the Radical
Melissa Sihra (editor)
WOMEN IN IRISH DRAMA
A Century of Authorship and Representation
Brian Singleton
MASCULINITIES AND THE CONTEMPORARY IRISH THEATRE
Performance Interventions
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Refugees, Theatre and
Crisis
Performing Global Identities
Alison Jeffers
Lecturer in Drama, University of Manchester, UK
© Alison Jeffers 2012
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-24747-5
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This book is dedicated to all those who have shared their
time and experiences with such generosity. Thank you Abas,
Adman, Alan, Basil, Benjamin, Borhan, Cristo, Christophe,
Louis-Denis, Eric, Eucharia, George, Girel, Hava, Herve,
Jacqueline, Jean, Jonathan, Lito, Lancine, Maryam, Redley,
Senodio, Rita, Robert, Pat, Timeyi, Tope, Ulrich and the
many other people who have given their time and energies
with such generosity.

Contents
List of Figures viii
Acknowledgements ix
Preface x
Introduction: Stories, Words and Points of View 1
1 R efugees, Crisis and Bureaucratic Performance 16
2 H osts and Guests: National Performance and the Ethics
of Hospitality 43
3 T aking up Space and Making a Noise:
Minority Performances of Activism 81
4 ‘ We with Them and Them with Us’: Diverse Cultural
Performances 110
Conclusion: Face to Face or Shoulder to Shoulder? 148
Notes 163
References 169
Index 183
vii
Figures
1 Young people from the ESOL Department at City College
participating in The Traffic of Our Stage at the Royal
Exchange Theatre, Manchester 2005 41
2 Scene from Le Dernier Caravansérail taken at the Lincoln
Center, New York in July 2005 68
3 Scene from Pericles by Cardboard Citizens/RSC 68
4 Boat People image projected onto the side of the Sydney
Opera House 82
5 An anti-deportation rally outside Manchester Town Hall,
Manchester, November 2005 89
6 Exodus Festival, Manchester, July 2010 112
7 Testimony performing at Exodus Festival,
Manchester, July 2010 113
8 A cake stall pictured with ‘Eastern’ carpets, Exodus
Festival, Manchester, July 2010 125
9 The character of Wana tells her story to the immigration
judge in A Letter from Home, John Thaw Studio,
University of Manchester, June 2006 142
viii
Acknowledgements
This book owes its existence to all of those who showed me what it
means to seek asylum and to live as a refugee.
Many colleagues have helped and advised me in the process of
researching and writing this book. I am so grateful to my colleagues
who made up In Place of War: Michael Balfour, Ananda Breed, Ruth
Daniel, Rachel Finn and Charlotte Hennessy; Jenny Hughes and
James Thompson were, and have continued to be, a special source of
advice and support. My thanks too to other colleagues at the
University of Manchester: Maggie Gale, Viv Gardner, Tony Jackson,
Johannes Sjoberg in Drama, Peter Gatrell in History, Simon Parry
and Helen Rees Leahy at the Institute of Cultural Practices and all my
other colleagues who have all been helpful and supportive, often
without even knowing it. Thank you to Amy Guest for her insightful
work on editing and indexing the material. Helen Nicholson and
Helen Gilbert from Royal Holloway University of London and Rea
Dennis from the University of Glamorgan have all given me invalu-
able advice and support at different stages. Thank you too to col-
leagues in Sydney and Melbourne: James Arvanitakis, Paul Brown,
Tom Burvill, Claudia Chidiac, Paul Dwyer, Emma Cox, Rand Hazou,
Shahin Shafaei, Caroline Wake, David Williams for being so wel-
coming and accommodating and for introducing me to the possibil-
ities inherent in thinking about refugees in relation to bureaucratic
performance.
Many thanks to colleagues at Community Arts North West, Waters
Edge Arts, Refugee Action in Manchester, the Medical Foundation for
the Care of Victims of Torture in Manchester, Multiagency Services
for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Manchester, and Manchester
Refugee Support Network. Special thanks too to Nigel Rose, James
Lupton and Gerri Moriarty for their insightful comments and prob-
ing questions. Finally, thank you to Mum and Dad and to Alan, Tom
and Caitlin for not commenting too much on the times when I have
paid more attention to my computer than I have to them.
ix