Performing Statelessness in Europe by S E Wilmer
‘This well informed and clearly written book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the relationship between theatre, migration and dispossession. The author introduces complex legislation in an informed and economic manner, deftly folding it into the theories of Foucault, Agamben and others, to reflect on detailed examples from theatre and performance practices in the UK, Ireland and other European states.’
— Dr. Alison Jeffers, Senior Lecturer in Drama, University of Manchester
With the European Union failing to find a political solution to the current migration crisis, this book examines performative strategies that contest nationalist prejudices in representing the conditions of refugees, the stateless and the dispossessed. S. E. Wilmer discusses a variety of artistic works that have challenged the deficiencies in governmental and transnational practices and the innovative efforts by migrants and their hosts to imagine and build a new future. The book 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 book will appeal to those of us interested in questions of statelessness, migration, and the problematic role of the nation-state.