Solidarities on the move: transborder theatre in Europe since 2015

Gartner, Miriam Anna (2024). Solidarities on the move: transborder theatre in Europe since 2015. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

Between the 2015 Long Summer of Migration and the Covid-19 pandemic, as border violence and far-right nationalism surged, theatre projects across Europe developed critical-creative spaces where regimes of exclusion could be documented, questioned, and reimagined. This thesis charts the transnational trajectories of four such performances: The Jungle (2017/2018), Phone Home (2016), Azimut Dekolonial (2019), and The Walk (2021). Drawing on scripts, live performances, recordings, set designs, promotion materials, interviews, and reception discourses, I trace an increasingly insistent shift of emphasis: departing from traditional humanitarian frameworks, these performances direct the critical gaze back onto Europe, its governments, and its institutions, inviting audiences to question the legitimacy of migration policies and border categories.

The four productions follow diverse journeys across and beyond Europe. Termed here ‘transborder theatre’, these expansive, collaborative projects respond to changing political moments, working with different styles and theatrical languages – from immersive stages to digital metatheatre, from walk-through archive installations to itinerant street puppetry. I show how these forms enable the performances to symbolically re-introduce Europe’s externalised and unacknowledged border contexts into the immediate time-space. Using interactive, synchronous, and self-referential elements, these theatrical encounters work to implicate audiences and performers in seemingly remote histories of migration and exclusion.

The performances gradually undermine representations that centre on the figure of the refugee/migrant as a humanitarian spectacle, a universalist archetype, or an object of politico-juridical suspicion. Instead, they turn towards more historicised and decolonial critiques of European border regimes, involving perspectives from artists, researchers, activists, and legal experts. By imbuing performances with historical, political, and legal specificity, Europe’s new transborder stages offer imaginative ways to reconceptualise contemporary languages of transnational solidarity.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):