Performing Statelessness in Europe

This book examines performative strategies that contest nationalist prejudices in representing the conditions of refugees, the stateless and the dispossessed. In the light of the European Union failing to find a political solution to the current migration crisis, it considers a variety of artistic works that have challenged the deficiencies in governmental and transnational practices, as well as innovative efforts by migrants and their hosts to imagine and build a new future. It discusses a diverse range of performative strategies, moving from a consideration of recent adaptations of Greek tragedy, to performances employing fictive identification, documentary dramas, immersive theatre, over-identification and subversive identification, nomadism and political activism. This study will appeal to those interested in questions of statelessness, migration, and the problematic role of the nation-state.

S. E. Wilmer is Professor Emeritus in Drama and former Head of the School of Drama, Film and Music at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He has been Visiting Professor at Stanford University and UC Berkeley and Research Fellow at the International Research Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Freie Universität, Berlin. He is the author of Theatre, Society and the Nation.

Introduction.- 1. Recontextualization and Adaptation of Ancient Greek Dramas.- 2. Performative Identification in Fictional Accounts.- 3. Documentary Theatre by and about Refugees.- 4. Unwed Mothers, Asylums and Immersive Theatre.- 5. Creating Dissensus and Cross-identification.- 6. Subversive Identification and Over-identification.- 7. Two Approaches to Nomadism: Fluxus and Théâtre du Soleil.- 8. The Institutional Response of the German Theatre.- Conclusion.